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An epidemiology of representations La Maqueta Hipertexto * El fluir del pensamiento. De lo insabido que hace saber... Del "Arte" a las "prcticas artsticas" Jacques Lacan, Seminar on The Purloined Letter Retrato del artista como crtico cultural Jos Luis Brea * La crtica de arte - despus de la fe en el arte Jos Luis Brea * Art.matrix Jos Luis Brea * El tercer umbral 1 10 20 24 25 32 50 52 56 60
An epidemiology of representations
Seleccionado por: Arty Show [06-07-07] How do the microprocesses of cultural transmission affect the macro structure of culture, its content, its evolution? The microprocesses, the small-scale local processes I am talking about are, on the one hand, psychological processes that happen inside people's brains, and on the other hand, changes that people bring about in their common environment for instance the noise they make when they talk or the paths they unconsciously maintain when they walkand through which they interact. Just as the human mind is not a blank slate on which culture would somehow imprint its content, the communication process is not a xerox machine copying contents from one mind to another. This is where I part company not just from your standard semiologists or social scientists who take communication to be a coding-decoding system, a transmission system, biased only by social interests, by power, by intentional or unconscious distortions, but that otherwise could deliver a kind of smooth flow of undistorted information. I also part company from Richard Dawkins who sees cultural transmission as based on a process of replication, and who assume that imitation and communication provide a robust replication system. AN EPIDEMIOLOGY OF REPRESENTATIONS A Talk with Dan Sperber [7.27.05]
Dan Sperber Edge Video Broadband | Modem Introduction Dan Sperber is a French anthropologist who has focused on the more cognitive, more naturalist, approaches linked to evolution. For a long time, he says, my ideas were not very well received among anthropologists. They've been discussed a lot, but I found myself spending too much time with my fellow anthropologists arguing the basics of the field rather than moving forward in research. I got involved in linguistics, experimental psychology, philosophy of science, evolutionary biology, and lots of fascinating topicsand continuing also the conversation with anthropologists. Anthropology is a discipline that has been in crisis all my life. Dan Sperber's parents were both eastern-European Jews; his father, Manes Sperber, a famous novelist, was born in Galicia, grew up in Vienna, then moved to Germany. He met his mother, who came from Latvia, in France in the 30s . Manes Sperber was a Communist, was very active in the party, but left the party at the time of the Moscow trials. Sperber was born in France. That's my culture, he says. I am French. Still, there are French people who are much more French than I am. They have roots as they say, but the image of roots has always made me smile. You know, I'm not a plant. The reason he gives for having become an anthropologist is that he was raised an atheist. There was no god in the family. His father, Manes Sperber, was from a Jewish family, had refused to do his bar mitzvah, and he transmitted zero religion to his son, but at the same time, he had deep respect for religious people. There was no sense that
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they are somehow inferior. This left the young Sperber with a puzzle: how can people, intelligent decent people, be so badly mistaken? Sperber is known for his work in developing a naturalistic approach to culture under the name of epidemiology of representations, and, with British linguist Deirdre Wilson, for developing a cognitive approach to communication known as Relevance Theory. Both the epidemiology of representations and relevance theory has been influential and controversial. He is also known for his early work on the anthropology or religion, in which he tried to understand, in a generalist manner and in a positive way (i.e. without making them into idiots), why people could be religious. He took part in classical anthropological studies but he also argued from the start that you have to look at basic innate mental structures, which, he argued, played quite an important role in the very possibility of religious beliefs, in the fact that, more generally, beliefs in the supernatural fixate in the way they do in the human mind, are so extraordinarily catching. Sperber's catchiness, a theory he has been exploring for a generation, connects with Malcolm Gladwell's idea of a tipping point. I've never met Gladwell, he says, but when his book came out, many people sent me the book, or told me to read it, telling me that here's the same kind of thing you've been arguing for a long time. Yes, you get the kind of epidemiological process of something gradually, almost invivibly spreading in a population and then indeed reaching a tipping point. That's the kind of dynamic you may find with epidemiological phenomena. Still, I don't believe that Gladwell or anybody else, myself included, has a satisfactory understanding of the general causes of the dynamics of cultural distribution. Now, if I could just write with the slickness of Gladwell, and coin one of his best-selling titles such as Blink! or The Tipping Point. . . but I guess I would also have to give up trying to convey much of the hard substance of my work. Oh well... Edge is pleased to present An Epidemiology of Representations: A Talk with Dan Sperber. JB DAN SPERBER, Directeur de Recherche au CNRS, Paris, is a French social and cognitive scientist. He is the author of Rethinking Symbolism, On Anthropological Knowledge, and Explaining Culture. He is also the coauthor, (with Deirdre Wilson) of Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Sperber holds a research professorship at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, and has held visiting positions at Cambridge University, the British Academy, the London School of Economics, the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Princeton University, the University of Michigan, the University of Bologna, and the University of Hong-Kong. DAN SPERBER's Edge Bio Page
AN EPIDEMIOLOGY OF REPRESENTATIONS [DAN SPERBER:] What I want to know is how, in an evolutionary perspective, social cultural phenomena relate to psychological mental phenomena. The social and the psychological sciences,when they emerged as properly scholarly disciplines with their own departments in the nineteenth century took quite different approaches, adopted different methodologies, asked different questions. Psychologists lost sight of the fact that what's happening in human minds is always informed by the culture in which individuals grow. Social scientists lost sight of the fact that the transmission, the maintenance, and the transformation of culture takes place not uniquely but in part in these individual psychological processes. This means that if what you're studying is culture, the part played by the psychological moments, or episodes, in the transmission of culture should be seen as crucial. I
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find it unrealistic to think of culture as something hovering somehow above individuals culture goes through them, and through their minds and their bodies and that is, in good part, where culture is being made. I've been arguing for a very long time now that one should think of the evolved psychological makeup of human beings both as a source of constraints on the way culture can develop, evolve, and also, of course, as what makes culture possible in the first place. I've been arguing against the now discredited blank slate view of the human mindnow splendidly laid to rest by Steve Pinkerbut it wasn't discredited when I was a student, in fact the blank slate view was what we were taught and what most people went on teaching. Against this, I was arguing that there were specific dispositions, capacities, competencies, in the human mind that gave rise to culture, contributed to shaping it, and also constrained the way it can evolve so that led me to work both in anthropologyand more generally in the social sciences,which was my original domain, and,more and more, in what was to become cognitive sciences. In those years, the late 60s, psychology was in the early stags of the cognitive revolution. It was a domain that really transformed itself in a radical manner. This was, and still is, a very exciting intellectual period in which to live, with, alas, nothing comparable happening in social sciences, (where little that is truly exciting has happened during this period in my opinion). I wanted the social sciences to take advantage of this revolution in the study of cognition and I've tried to suggest how this could be done. How do the microprocesses of cultural transmission affect the macro structure of culture, its content, its evolution? The microprocesses, the small-scale local processes I am talking about are, on the one hand, psychological processes that happen inside people's brains, and on the other hand, changes that people bring about in their common environmentfor instance the noise they make when they talk or the paths they unconsciously maintain when they walkand through which they interact. Just as the human mind is not a blank slate on which culture would somehow imprint its content, the communication process is not a xerox machine copying contents from one mind to another. This is where I part company not just from your standard semiologists or social scientists who take communication to be a coding-decoding system, a transmission system, biased only by social interests, by power, by intentional or unconscious distortions, but that otherwise could deliver a kind of smooth flow of undistorted information. I also part company from Richard Dawkins who sees cultural transmission as based on a process of replication, and who assume that imitation and communication provide a robust replication system. A good part of my work has been to study, in large part with British linguist Deirdre Wilson, the mechanisms of human communication and show that they're much more complex and interesting than is generally assumed, and much less preservative and replicative and more constructive than one might think: understanding involves a lot of construction, and not just reconstruction, and very little by way of simple replication. When you are told something, the simple view of what happens would be: 'ah! These are words, they have meaning,' and so you decode the meaning of the word and you thereby understand what the speaker meant. A more realistic and, as I said, also a more interesting idea is that the words don't encode the speaker meaning, they just give you evidence of the speaker's meaning. When we speak we want our audience to understand something that's in our mind. And we have no way to fully encode it, and trying at least to encode as much as possible would be absurdly cumbersome. Linguistic utterances, however rich and complex they may be, cannot fully encode our thoughts. But they can give strong richly structured piece of evidence of what our thoughts are. From the point of view of the audience, a speaker is
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providing rich pieces of evidence, which we interpret in a context of shared background knowledge, drawing on the common cultural, on the local situation, on the ongoing conversation, and so on. You construct a complex representation helped by all these different factors. You to end up with something which will have been strongly guided, sometimes guided in an exquisitely detailed manner, by the communication, by the words used by the speaker, but which end up being a thought of your own, relevant to you, a recognition, to begin with, of what the speaker meant, from which you extract what is relevant to you. We're not that interested when we try to comprehend what others say, in getting in our minds a copy of what they had in mind, we're interested in getting that which is of use and of relevance to us, and we see what others are trying to tell us as a source of insight and information from which we can indeed construct a thought of our own. The same is true of imitation; rarely are you concerned when you imitate other people's behavior in copying them exactly. What you want when you see others doing something that you think is worth doing, for instance, cook a souffl, it's not to copy the exact gestures and the exact souffle that you saw, with its qualities, and also maybe its defects, your goal is to cook a good souffl, your good souffl. The goal of these partly preservative processes of communication and imitation is not to copy per se, but to take advantage of information provided by others in order to build thoughts of our own, knowledge of our own, objects of our own, behaviors of our own, for which we take part of the responsibility. The process is constructive in that sense. Communication is a very broad notion one should ask whether it makes sense to look for a general theory of communication, given that the notion covers such a variety of processes processes of communication among machines; biologists talk about communication among cells; by animal communication biologists mean also unitentional deception as when the viceroy butterfly has wings mimicking the pattern found on the poisonous monarch butterfly, so as not to be eaten by predator birds, and so on. All these form of communication and many others are communication in a very broad sense where some informationin some broad sense of information toois provided by one device or organism, and is used by another. There are some commonalities linked to this general definition of communication, and indeed, Shannon and Weaver for instance were interested in such a very basic notion. But if we think of communication in biological terms, it is not clear that we have the subject matter of a useful general theory. Think of locomotion. How much can you get from a general theory of locomotion, even sticking to the biological domain and leaving aside artifacts, airplanes, cars, bicycles. I doubt that there is much to get from a general theory of locomotion that would cover fish swimming, birds flying, snakes crawling, us walking, and so on. If you're studying human locomotion, then you look at the specific organs, the way, for instance, we do it, why we do it, what evolutionary pressure have selected our particular way of doing it. Even moremuch morethan human bipedal upright walking, human communication is very special, it's quite unlike the communication you find in other animals. Not just because of language, which indeed has no real equivalent among other species, but also because of another reason which is also quite remarkable but that has not been stressed, and on which Deirdre Wilson and I have been doing a lot of work, namely that if you look at human languages as codes which in a sense they undoubtedly are they are very defective codes! When say, vervet monkeys communicate among themselves, one vervet monkey might spot a leopard and emit an alarm cry that indicates to the other monkeys in his group that there's a leopard around. The other vervet monkeys are informed by this alarm cry of the presence of a leopard, but they're not particularly informed of the
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mental state of the communicator, and they don't give a damn about it. The signal puts them in a cognitive state of knowledge about the presence of a leopard, similar to that of the communicating monkey here you really have a smooth codingdecoding system. In the case of humans, when we speak we're not interested per se in the meaning of the words, we register what the word means as a way to find out what the speaker means. Speaker's meaning is what's involved. Speaker's meaning is a mental state of the speaker, an intention he or she has to share with us some content. Human communication is based on the ability we have to attribute mental state to others, to want to change the mental states of others, and to accept that others change ours. When I communicate with you I am trying to change your mind. I am trying to act on your mental state. I'm not just putting out a kind of signal for you to decode. And I do that by providing you with evidence of a mental state in which I want to put you in and evidence of my intention to do so. The role of what is often known in cognitive science as theory of mind, that is the uniquely human ability to attribute complex mental states to others, is as much a basis of human communication as is language itself. I am full of admiration for the mathematical theory of information and communication, the work of Shannon, Weaver, and others, and it does give a kind of very general conceptual framework which we might take advantage of. But if you apply it directly to human communication, what you get is a mistaken picture, because the general model of communication you find is a coding-decoding model of communication, as opposed to this more constructive and inferential form of communication which involves infering the mental stateof others, and that's really characteristic of humans. I have been developing my own approach to culture under the general heading of epidemiology of representations. The first thing to do, of course, is to take away the negative connotation of epidemiology it's not the epidemiology of diseases epidemiology is the study of the distribution of certain items or conditions in the population. One can study the distribution of particular pathological conditions, but you can also study the distribution of good habits, or thoughts, or representations, artifacts, or forms of knowledge. I'm not assuming that culture is good I don't want to have a cultural epidemiology to be on the side of the angels, as opposed to medical anthropology on the side of the demons. What's I like about epidemiology is that it's the one social science that is truly naturalistic in studying what happens in populations, typically in human populations, and it explains the macro phenomena at the level of population such as epidemics, by the aggregation of the micro processes both inside individuals and in their interaction. I believe that the cultural and the social in general should be approached in the same manner. Of course I'm not the only one to do that, a number of people, mostly coming from biology, like Luigi Cavalli-Sforza, Marcus W. Feldman, E.O Wilson and Xharles Lumsden, Richard Dawkins, Bill Durham, Robert Boyd, and Peter Richerson, have developed different conceptions which in this broad sense are epidemiological, or, another way to put it: they are forms of population-thinking applied to culture. You take what happens at the population level to results from the microprocesses affecting individuals in the population. Dawkins, who is particularly clear and simple in a good way in his approach, offers a contrast to my approach. For Dawkins, you can take the Darwinian model of selection and apply it almost as is to culture. Why? Because the basic idea is that, just as genes are replicators, bits of culture that Dawkins called memes are replicators too. If you take the case of population genetics, the causal mechanisms involved split into two subsets. You have the genes, which are extremely reliable mechanisms of replication. On the other hand, you have a great variety of environmental factors including organisms which are both expression of genes and part of their
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environment , environmental factors that affect the relative reproductive success of the genes. You have then on one side this extremely robust replication mechanism, and on the other side a huge variety of other factors that make these competing replication devices more or less successful. Translate this into the cultural domain, and you'll view memes, bits of culture, as again very strong replication devices, and all the other factors, historical, ecological, and so on, as contributing to the relative success of the memes. What I'm denying, and I've mentioned this before, is that there is a basis for a strong replication mechanism either in cognition or in communication. It's much weaker than that. As I said, preservative processes are always partly constructive processes. When they don't replicate, this does not mean that they make an error of copying. Their goal is not to copy. There are transformation in the process of transmission all the time, and also in the process of remembering and retrieving past, stored information, and these transformations are part of the efficient working of these mechanisms. In the case of cultural evolution, this yields a kind of paradox. On the one hand, of course, we have macro cultural stability we do see the same dish being cooked, the same ideologies being adopted, the same words being used, the same song being sung. Without some relatively high degree of cultural stabilitywhich was even exaggerated in classical anthropology, the very notion of culture wouldn't make sense. How then do we reconcile this relative macro stability at the cultural level, with a lack of fidelity at the micro level? You might think: if it's stable at the macro level, what else could provide you this macro stability apart from the faithful copying at the micro level? It's the only possible explanation that most people think of. But that's not the only one, and it's not even a plausible one. Dawkins himself has pointed out that each act of of cultural transmission may involve some mistakes in copying, some mutation. But if that is the case, then the Darwinian selection model isunlikely to apply, at least in its basic form. The problem is reconciling this macro stability with the micro lack of sufficient fidelity. The answer, I believe, is linked precisely to the fact that in human, transmission is achieved not just by replication, but also by construction. If it were just replication, copying, and there were lots of errors of copy all the time, then nothing would stabilize and it's unlikely that the selective pressures would be strong enough to produce a real selection comparable to the one you see in biology. On the other hand, if you have constructive processes, they can compensate the limits of the copying processes. What happens is this. Although indeed when things get transmitted they tend to vary with each episode of transmission, these variations tend to gravitate around what I call cultural attractors, which are, if you look at the dynamics of cultural transmission, points or regions in the space of possibilities, towards which transformations tend to go. The stability of cultural phenomena is not provided by a robust mechanism of replication. It's given in part, yes, by a mechanism of preservation which is not very robust, not very faithful, (and it's not its goal to be so). And it's given in part by a strong tendency for the construction in every mind at every moment of new ideas, new uses of words, new artifacts, new behaviors, to go not in a random direction, but towards attractors. And, by the way, these cultural attractors themselves have a history. Dawkins, of course, is only one of the people who have proposed new ways of modeling cultural evolution. He's important because he brings it down to the simplest possible version there's a great merit in simplicity. He sees cultural evolution at the same time as being analogous to biological evolution, and as being an evolution almost independent from biological evolution: it has just been made possible by the biological evolution of homo sapiens, which has given us the mind we have, and which, so the story goes, makes us capable indeed of
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endlessly copying contents. We are supposed to be imitation machines, meme machines to use Susan Blakemore's phrase, and this explains that. Dawkins, in a strange way, presents something very similar to the blank slate view of the mind. The blank slate view, as I was taught it in anthropology, says the human mind is capable of learning anything whatever content would be provided by culture can be written on the blank slate. Well, the general imitating machine does more or less the same thing. It's capable of imitating just whatever type of content it is presented with, and the relative success of some contents against others, has to do with the selective forces. The idea that the human mind is such a kind of universal imitation machine is hardly better psychology, in my view, than the blank slate story. Others, E.O Wilson and Charles Lumsden, Rob Boyd and Pete Richerson, have asked to what extent the evolved dispositions that both constrain and make possible culture are, in return, affected by cultural evolution itself so as to yield a kind of gene-culture coevolution. Instead of having two evolutionary scenarios running in parallel, one biological evolution, the other cultural evolution, you get some degree of interaction, possibly a strong interaction, between gene and culture. The general idea has got to be correct. The details, in my opinion, are still very poorly understood. For a variety of reasons, I believe that memes are not the right story about cultural evolution. This is because in the cultural case, replication is not very successful in explaining cultural stability. I also believe that among the factors we need to take into account to explain cultural attraction of which I was talking before, are evolved aspect of the human psychology. The one type of scholarship and research that has to be brought into the picture, in my view, is evolutionary psychology, as defended in particular in the work of Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, Steve Pinker and taken up in more critical ways by a growing number of developmental psychologists and of philosophers. To understand culture, we have to understand the complexity of the psychological makeup of human beings. We have to go to really deep psychology, understood both in a richly cognitive manner and with a proper evolutionary perspective, to put start explaining cultural evolution. We need a representation of a human mind that's complex in an appropriate manner, true to the empirical data, and rich enough indeed to explain the regularities the, stability, and the variability of culture. This is them a different story, but it's still a Darwinian story. It's a Darwinian story in the sense that it's an application of population thinking, which tries to explains the macro phenomena in terms of a micro processes and properties, and which doesn't assume that there are types or essences of macro cultural and social things. Macro regularities are always the outcome of distribution of micro features, evolving all the time. In this Darwinian story however, instead of causal processes in culture as split between robust replication devices and a variety of selection factor, we have a much more promiscuous form of causality. Cultural causality is promiscuous. Constructive processes always interfere with preservation processes. So we need to build models different from standard Darwinian models of selection, in order to arrive at the right way to draw on Darwinian inspiration with regard to culture, that is, we must generalize Darwin to the cultural case, rather than adjust it in a way which twists the data well beyond what is empirically plausible. ~~ The idea of God isn't a supernatural idea. If the idea of God were supernatural, then religion would be true. The idea of God, the idea, the representation of something supernatural is not itself supernatural. If it were, then we would be out of business. Precisely what we're trying to explain is, to quote the title of a book by Pascal Boyer, the naturalness of religious ideas, explain, in other terms, how these ideas of the supernatural can occur in the natural beings we are, in human brains and minds and culture, and have the kind of success that
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they have, in spite of the fact that you can't explain them in the way that you explain so many human ideas, such as ideas that are acquired through experience of the things they are about. We humans have ideas about plants and animals because we experience plants and animals in a special way with the brain we have. We don't experience God, or goblins or witches, because there are no such things. Nevertheless, we have rich complex ideas about them, a richness in many ways comparable to the ideas we have about plants, animals and the natural things around them. How is that possible? The issue is what makes these kind of ideas psychologically, cognitively attractive catching, such that they stay with you in your head and you may want to communicate them and to guide your behavior on their basis. And also: which of them, among all the unrealistic unsupported ideas that are possible in infinite variety, are going to be so catching as to achieve cultural success, in the manner of the many religious ideas that has been around for centuries? It's not like any blatantly false idea will somehow make it to a cultural success far from it. Most of them don't stand a chance. What's special about ideas of the supernatural? I argued long ago that it had to do with the fact that they are rooted in our cognitive dispositions, in the way we approach the natural world. Instead of departing from our commonsense ideas so to speak at random, they're like direct provocation they have always an aspect of going directly against what should be the most intuitively obvious. So for instance it's part of our common sense knowledge of of living forms, that an animal can't be both a dog and a cat, but the supernatural is full of creatures like dragons that typically belong to several species simultaneously. It's part of our common sense knowledge of the physical world that an entity cannot be in two places simultaneously, but ubiquity is a distinctive trait of supernatural beings. It's kind of again commonsense, in our commonsense psychology which we deploy in everyday interaction with one another, that one's visual perceptions are limited to what's present in front of one's eyes. Supernatural beings typically can see the past, the future, and things on the other side of earth. So supernatural beings are kind of provocations to commonsense. They are really deeply counterintuitive. That's an idea I suggested a long time ago and that Pascal Boyer has developed and enriched in a remarkable fashion, and which I think is one of the cognitive ingredients that helps explain the success of religious ideas. Of course, it's only one little fragment of a kind of complex picture. ~~ I started as an anthropologist. Precisely because they were more cognitive, more naturalist, more linked also to evolution than most, for a long time, my ideas were not very well received among anthropologists. They've been discussed a lot, but I found myself spending too much time with my fellow anthropologists arguing the basics of the field rather than moving forward in research. I got involved in linguistics, experimental psychology, philosophy of science, evolutionary biology, and lots of fascinating topicsand continuing also the conversation with anthropologists. Anthropology is a discipline that has been in crisis all my life. When I started the crisis was linked to the end of the colonization. Anthropology had developed during the period of colonization, as a kind of ancillary science for colonial enterprise. At the same time so many anthropologists were actually active in anti-colonialist movement, and that was also one of the reasons I came to anthropology. But, the decolonisation, anthropology lost this kind of historical and sociological context. Anthropologists in the 60s, 70s, were asking about their political role, about whether or not we were on the right side. Anthropologists started studying themselves and trying to reflect on their own situation. It was a kind of reflective anthropology, which had a number of interesting aspects. I certainly don't think it was useless although it became a bit obsessive. Parallel to these developments, were the post-structuralist and then post-modernist movements in
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the humanities and the social sciences, the development of cultural studies, and many anthropologists felt at ease in these movements. This produced a new kind of discourse, taking the study of other cultures as much as a pretext as a subject matter to be investigated in a standard scholarly manner. Again, some of the products of this appraoch are of genuine interest, but on the whole more harm has been done than good. While this was happening, others, in part in reaction against this turn toward the literary in anthropology, moved on the contrary toward a more naturalistic anthropology. They became interested in social biology, in biological anthropology. What you find now in anthropology departments is that people can't talk to each other. Some universities have now had two anthropology departments. So anthropology is stilll in crisis, even if it is not the same crisis. You can look at such a crisis from an institutional or from an intellectual point of view. Universities as we know them emerged in the nineteenth century and unerwent major changes, in particular after World War II. It does not make sense to project this short past into an indefinite future. In fact, universities are evolving, transforming themselves beyond recognition. The biggest changes are will be due to new communication technology. There is also now a big and blatant gap between the structure of departments in universities, which have to do with institution of transmission of knowledge, and which seem to define stable domains such as psychology, anthropology, sociology, and the real ongoing research which is structured in new ways in the form of creative, or dynamic, research programs, that may fall within a traditional discipline, or, more often, across several traditional disciplines. Depending on the productivity of such dynamic programs, they are can go on for ten years, 20 years, 30 years, or more. It is these dynamic research programs that interest me; I've been involved in several, and that's what I find to be intellectually exciting. When we say anthropology is in crisis we're talking about anthropology as defined by academic institutions. And it doesn't matter. It deserves to be in crisis; it deserves to explode, let it do so. Coming from THE EDGEEdge Foundation, Inc., was established in 1988 as an outgrowth of a group known as The Reality Club. Its informal membership includes of some of the most interesting minds in the world.
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La Maqueta
Philip K. Dick [26-06-07] Verne Haskel subi los escalones del porche casi sin fuerzas, arrastrando el abrigo tras l. Estaba cansado. Cansado y desalenta-do. Y le dolan los pies.
Dios mo exclam Madge, cuando l cerr la puerta y se quit la chaqueta y el sombrero. Y has vuelto? Haskel dej caer el maletn y empez a desanudarse los zapatos, con el cuerpo vencido. Estaba plido y ojeroso. Di algo! Est preparada la cena? No, la cena an no est preparada. Qu ha pasado esta vez? Te has vuelto a pelear con Larson? Haskel entr en la cocina dando tumbos y llen un vaso con agua caliente y soda. Vaymonos. A qu te refieres? Lejos de Woodland. A San Francisco, o donde sea. Haskel be-bi su soda, apoyando su decrpito cuerpo en el fregadero. Me siento fatal. Quiz debera ir a ver al doctor Barnes. Ojal hoy fuera viernes y maana sbado. Qu te apetece para cenar? Nada. No lo s. Haskel sacudi la cabeza. Cualquier cosa. Se desplom frente a la mesa d la cocina. Slo me apetece des-cansar. Abre una lata de estofado. Lomo y judas. Cualquier cosa. Sugiero que vayamos a Don's Steakhouse. Los lunes tienen bue-nos solomillos. No. Ya he visto suficientes caras humanas por hoy. Supongo que ests demasiado cansado para llevarme al local de Helen Grant. El coche est en el garaje. Estropeado otra vez. Si lo cuidaras mejor... Qu demonios quieres que haga? Envolverlo en una bolsa de ce-lofn? No me grites, Verne Haskel! Madge enrojeci de furia. Tal vez te apetezca prepararte t mismo la cena. Haskel se puso en pie con dificultades. Arrastr los pies hacia la puerta del stano. Hasta luego. Adnde vas? Al stano. Oh, Dios mo! grit Madge. Esos trenes! Esos juguetes! Cmo es posible que un hombre mayor, un hombre adulto...? Haskel no dijo nada. Ya estaba bajando la escalera, tanteando en busca de la luz. El stano estaba fro y hmedo. Haskel tom la gorra de maqui-nista del gancho y se la encasquet en la cabeza. Una dbil oleada de entusiasmo y renovadas energas recorrieron su cuerpo cansado. Se acerc a la gran mesa de madera terciada con pasos ansiosos. Por todas partes corran trenes. Por el suelo, bajo el depsito de carbn, entre las tuberas de vapor de la caldera. Las vas conver-gan en la mesa, ascendan en rampas cuidadosamente niveladas. La mesa se hallaba abarrotada de transformadores, seales, interrupto-res y montones de cables y accesorios. Y... Y la ciudad. La maqueta de Woodland, minuciosa hasta el ltimo detalle. Cada rbol y casa, cada
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tienda, edificio, calle y boca de incendio. Una ciudad en miniatura, perfecta. Construida con celoso cuidado a lo largo de muchos aos. Ni siquiera recordaba cuntos. Desde que era nio, construa, encolaba y trabajaba al salir del colegio. Haskel conect el transformador principal. Las seales lumino-sas se encendieron a lo largo de la va. Dot de energa a la pesada locomotora Lionel, estacionada con sus vagones de mercancas. La lo-comotora cobr vida suavemente y se desliz por la va, un relampagueante proyectil oscuro que le pona un nudo en la garganta. Accion un interruptor elctrico y la locomotora descendi por la rampa, atraves un tnel y sali de la mesa. Corri bajo el banco de trabajo. Sus trenes. Y su ciudad. Haskel se inclin sobre las casas y ca-lles en miniatura; su corazn se llen de orgullo. l la haba cons-truido..., con sus propias manos. Cada centmetro. Cada perfecto centmetro. Toda la ciudad. Toc la esquina de la tienda de Fred. No faltaba ni un detalle. Los escaparates, las muestras de gnero, los letreros, los mostradores. El hotel Uptown. Pas la mano sobre el tejado. Los sofs y bu-tacas del vestbulo. Los vea a travs de las ventanas. La farmacia de Green. Almohadillas para juanetes. Revistas. Ac-cesorios Automovilsticos Frazier. Restaurante Mxico City. Sastre-ra Sharpstein. Licorera Bob. Billares As. Toda la ciudad. La recorri con la mano. l la haba construido; la ciudad era suya. El tren sali a toda velocidad por debajo del banco de trabajo. Sus ruedas pasaron sobre un conmutador automtico y un puente levadizo descendi obedientemente. El tren pas por encima y se alej, arrastrando los vagones. Haskel aument la potencia. El tren aceler. Son el silbato. Do-bl una curva pronunciada y vol sobre un cruce de vas. Ms ve-locidad. Las manos de Haskel saltaron hacia el transformador. El tren avanz como una flecha. Tom una curva, oscilando y sacu-dindose. El transformador se hallaba al mximo de potencia. El tren corra sobre las vas como una mancha difusa, atravesando puentes e interruptores, tras las grandes tuberas de la caldera. Desapareci en el interior del depsito de carbn. Un momento despus surgi por el otro lado, oscilando de un lado a otro. Haskel disminuy la velocidad del tren. Su pecho se mova al comps de la respiracin. Se sent en el taburete cercano al banco de trabajo y encendi un cigarrillo con dedos temblorosos. El tren y la maqueta le producan una extraa sensacin. Le cos-taba explicarla. Siempre haba amado los trenes, las locomotoras, seales y edificios a escala. Desde que era nio, tal vez desde los seis o siete aos. Su padre le haba regalado el primer tren: una lo-comotora y algunas vas. Un viejo tren de juguete. A los nueve aos le regalaron su primer tren elctrico. Y dos cambios de vas. Lo fue ampliando, ao tras ao. Vas, locomotoras, agujas, va-gones, seales. Transformadores ms poderosos. Y el principio de la ciudad. Haba construido la ciudad con mucha minuciosidad, pieza a pieza. Primero, cuando asista a la escuela secundaria inferior, la Estacin del Pacfico Sur. Despus, la parada de taxis contigua. El bar donde coman los camioneros. La calle Broad. Y continu. Ms y ms. Casas, edificios, tiendas. Una ciudad completa, que creca bajo sus manos a medida que los aos pasaban. Todas las tardes, cuando volva a casa, trabajaba. Pegaba, cor-taba, pintaba y aserraba. Ahora estaba prcticamente terminada. Casi. Tena cuarenta y tres aos y la ciudad estaba casi terminada. Haskel se movi alrededor de la gran mesa de madera terciada. Extendi las manos con reverencia. Toc algunos comercios, la florera, el cine, la compaa telefnica, Suministros Hidrulicos Larson. Y eso, tambin. Su centro de trabajo. Una perfecta miniatura de la fbrica, hasta el menor detalle. Haskel frunci el ceo. Jim Larson. Haba trabajado durante veinte aos como un esclavo,
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da tras da. Para qu? Para ver cmo los dems le pasaban por encima. Hombres ms jvenes. Favoritos del jefe. Serviles gusanos con corbatas brillantes, pantalones bien planchados, y amplias y estpidas sonrisas. Haskel haba acumulado odio y despecho. Woodland le haba robado lo mejor de su vida. Nunca haba sido feliz. La seora Murphy en la escuela superior. Los compaeros de la fraternidad en la universidad. Los empleados de los pretenciosos almacenes. Sus vecinos. Policas, carteros, conductores de autobs y mensajeros. Incluso su esposa. Incluso Madge. Nunca se haba mezclado con la ciudad, el rico y caro pequeo suburbio de San Francisco, en la parte baja de la pennsula, al otro lado del cinturn de niebla. En Woodland dominaba la maldita clase media alta. Demasiadas mansiones, jardines, coches cromados y tumbonas. Demasiado pomposo y elegante. Hasta donde alcanzaban sus recuerdos. En el colegio. Su trabajo... Larson. Suministros Hidrulicos. Veinte aos de duro trabajo. Los dedos de Haskel se cerraron sobre el diminuto edificio, la maqueta de Suministros Hidrulicos Larson. La arranc con furia y la tir al suelo. La pisote; los fragmentos de vidrio, metal y cartn se convirtieron en una masa informe. Dios, temblaba de pies a cabeza. Mir los restos. Su corazn la-ta con violencia. Extraas, locas emociones se retorcan en su in-terior. Pensamientos que nunca haba abrigado. Contempl durante un largo momento el confuso montn, lo que haba sido la maqueta de Suministros Hidrulicos Larson. Se apart con brusquedad. Como en trance, Haskel volvi a su banco de trabajo y se sent en el taburete. Reuni sus herramientas y materiales, conect el taladro elctrico. Slo tard unos momentos. Haskel construy una nueva maque-ta, trabajando con sus dedos veloces y hbiles. Pint, enganch, ensambl piezas. Dibuj las letras de un letrero microscpico y espar-ci un csped verde. Despus, transport la maqueta a la mesa y la peg en el sitio correcto, donde haba estado Suministros Hidrulicos Larson. El nuevo edificio brill bajo la luz del techo, todava hmedo y re-luciente. Funeraria de Woodland Haskel se frot las manos en un xtasis de satisfaccin. Sumi-nistros Hidrulicos haba desaparecido. l lo haba destruido, bo-rrado del mapa, arrancado de la ciudad. Ante l estaba Woodland..., sin Suministros Hidrulicos. En su lugar, una funeraria. Sus ojos brillaron. Frunci los labios. Sus tormentosas emocio-nes se desataron. Se haba desembarazado de aquello con determi-nacin. En un segundo. Todo era muy sencillo... Sorprendentemen-te sencillo. Era extrao que no lo hubiera pensado antes. Madge Haskel se llev a los labios un vaso alto de cerveza muy fra y dijo: A Verne le pasa algo. Lo not sobre todo anoche, cuando lleg a casa despus de trabajar. El doctor Paul Tyler gru, distrado. Un tipo muy neurtico. Complejo de inferioridad. Introversin y reserva. Pero va de mal en peor. l y sus trenes. Esos malditos trenes a escala. Santo Dios, Paul! Sabes que tiene toda una ciudad en el stano? De veras? La curiosidad de Tyler se despert. No lo saba. La tiene desde que le conozco. La empez cuando era nio. Imagnate a un hombre adulto jugando con trenes! Es... Es desa-gradable. Cada noche igual. Interesante. Tyler se acarici el mentn. Juega con ellos continuamente? Se trata de una pauta invariable? Cada noche. Ayer, ni siquiera cen. Lleg a casa y baj al s-tano directamente. Paul Tyler frunci el ceo. Madge estaba sentada ante l, be-biendo con languidez su cerveza. Eran las dos de la tarde. El da era caluroso y claro. La sala de estar posea un
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atractivo plcido y relajado. De repente, Tyler se levant. Vamos a echar un vistazo a las maquetas. No saba que haba llegado a tales extremos. De veras quieres verlo? Madge se subi la manga de la cha-queta del pijama y consult su reloj. No llegar a casa hasta las cinco. Se puso en pie de un salto y pos el vaso sobre la mesa. Muy bien. Tenemos tiempo. Estupendo. Bajemos. Tyler tom a Madge por el brazo y ambos corrieron hacia el s-tano, embargados por una extraa emocin. Madge encendi la luz del stano y lo dos se acercaron a la gran mesa de madera terciada, ner-viosos y risueos, como nios traviesos. Lo ves? dijo Madge, apretando el brazo de Tyler. Fjate. Aos de trabajo. Toda su vida. Tyler movi la cabeza lentamente. No me extraa. Su voz denotaba asombro. Nunca haba visto nada parecido. Los detalles... Es increble. S, Verne es un experto en bricolaje. Seal el banco de tra-bajo. No cesa de construir herramientas. Tyler pase con parsimonia alrededor de la mesa. Se inclin y examin la maqueta. Increble. Todos los edificios. La ciudad completa. Mira! Mi casa. Seal su lujoso edificio de apartamentos, situado a escasas manzanas de la residencia de Haskel. Me parece que no falta nada coment Madge. Te imaginas a un hombre adulto jugando con trenes a escala? Potencia. Tyler empuj una locomotora por la va. Por eso atrae a los chicos. Los trenes son objetos grandes. Enormes y rui-dosos. Smbolos de la potencia sexual. El nio ve el tren corriendo por la va. Es tan inmenso e inhumano que le asusta. Despus, le regalan un tren de juguete. Lo controla. Lo obliga a moverse y a parar, a correr y a frenar. l lo gobierna. El tren responde a sus in-dicaciones. Madge se estremeci. Subamos. Aqu hace fro. Y cuando el nio crece, se hace ms grande y fuerte. Entonces, puede abandonar el modelo simblico y dominar el objeto real, el tren real, conseguir un control autntico sobre las cosas. Una supre-maca efectiva. Tyler sacudi la cabeza. No este sustituto. Es poco comn que un adulto llegue a estos extremos. Frunci el ceo. No me haba dado cuenta que hay una funeraria en la ca-lle State. Una funeraria? Y esto: la tienda de animales Steuben, junto a la tienda de reparaciones de radios. Ah no hay ninguna tienda de animales. Tyler se devan los sesos. Qu hay all, junto a la tienda de re-paraciones? Pieles de Pars. Madge se abraz el cuerpo. Brrrrr. Vamos, Paul, subamos antes que me quede tiesa. Tyler lanz una carcajada. De acuerdo, conejita. Se dirigi hacia la escalera, con el ceo fruncido. Me pregunto por qu. Animales Domsticos Steuben. Primera noticia. Todo est tan detallado... Debe conocer la ciu-dad al dedillo. Poner una tienda que no existe... Apag la luz del stano. Y la funeraria. Qu hay en ese lugar? No es la...? Olvdalo le interrumpi Madge, corriendo hacia la caldea-da sala de estar. Eres tan malo como l. Los hombres son como nios. Tyler, enfrascado en sus pensamientos, no respondi. Su tranqui-la confianza en s mismo se haba esfumado; pareca nervioso y agitado. Madge baj las persianas. La sala de estar se sumi en una pe-numbra ambarina. Se dej caer en el sof y atrajo a Tyler a su lado. Deja de pensar en eso orden. Nunca te haba visto as. Le rode el cuello con sus esbel brazos y acerc los labios a su ore-ja. Si llego a saber que ibas a preocuparte tanto por l, no te habra permitido entrar.
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Tyler gru, inquieto. Por qu me permitiste entrar? Madge aument la presin de sus brazos. Su pijama de seda cru-ji cuando se aplast contra l. Tonto susurr. Jim Larson, enorme y pelirrojo, se qued boquiabierto. Qu quieres decir? Qu te ocurre? Me largo. Haskel amonton los objetos de su escritorio en el maletn. Envame el cheque a casa. Pero... Aprtate. Haskel empuj a un lado a Larson y sali al pasillo. Larson es-taba petrificado de estupefaccin. El rostro de Haskel albergaba una expresin fija; una mirada vidriosa, una mirada decidida que Larson jams haba observado antes. Te encuentras..., te encuentras bien? pregunt Larson. Claro. Haskel abri la puerta principal de la fbrica y desapa-reci dando un portazo. Por supuesto que me encuentro bien murmur para s. Se abri paso entre la multitud de compradores que abarrotaba las calles y frunci los labios. Puedes estar seguro que me encuentro bien. Cuidado, colega murmur un trabajador en tono de adverten-cia cuando Haskel le empuj. Lo siento. Haskel apresur el paso aferrando su maletn. Se detuvo un mo-mento en lo alto de la colina para recuperar el aliento. Haba dejado a sus espaldas Suministros Hidrulicos Larson. Haskel ri de forma estentrea. Veinte aos..., borrados en un segundo. Se haba termi-nado. Al infierno Larson. Al infierno la montona y pesada rutina de cada da. Sin ascensos ni futuro. Rutina y aburrimiento, mes tras mes. Asunto liquidado. Una vida nueva, volver a empezar. Sigui caminando. El sol se estaba poniendo. No cesaban de pasar coches; ejecutivos que regresaban a sus casas. Maana volveran al trabajo..., pero l no. Nunca ms. Lleg a su calle. La casa de Ed Tildon, una enorme y majestuosa estructura de hormign y vidrio, se alzaba ante l. El perro de Til-don se acerc corriendo y le ladr. Haskel pas de largo. El perro de Tildon. Lanz una salvaje carcajada. Ser mejor que te largues! grit al perro. Subi los escalones de su casa de dos en dos. Abri la puerta de un empujn. La sala de estar se hallaba en silencio y a oscuras. Se produjo un repentino movimiento. Formas que se apartaban y ponan en pie a toda prisa. Verne! exclam Madge. Qu haces en casa tan pronto? Verne Haskel dej caer el maletn y tir el sombrero y el abrigo sobre una silla. Su rostro arrugado estaba deformado por violentas tensiones internas. Qu demonios...? Madge corri hacia l, presa de los ner-vios, alisndose el pijama. Ha pasado algo? No te esperaba tan... Enmudeci, ruborizada. Quiero decir que... Paul Tyler avanz con aire despreocupado hacia Haskel. Hola, Verne murmur, violento. Pasaba por aqu y entr para saludarles y devolver un libro a tu mujer. Buenas tardes replic Haskel cortsmente. Dio media vuelta y se encamin hacia la puerta del stano, sin hacer caso de ambos. Estar abajo. Pero Verne! protest Madge. Qu ha pasado? Verne se detuvo un momento en la puerta. He dejado mi trabajo. Qu? He dejado mi trabajo. He terminado con Larson. Se acab. La puerta del stano se cerr con estrpito. Santo Dios! chill Madge, aferrando a Tyler con todas sus fuerzas. Ha perdido el juicio!
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Verne Haskel encendi la luz del stano de un manotazo, impaciente. Se encasquet la gorra de maquinista y acerc el taburete a la gran mesa de madera terciada. Y ahora, qu? Muebles Morris. Una tienda enorme y elegante, en la que todos los empleados le miraban por encima del hombro. Se frot las manos, regocijado. Al infierno con ellos. Al infierno los estirados empleados, que enarcaban las cejas cuando le vean entrar. Todo cabello, corbatas de lazo y pauelos doblados. Quit la maqueta de Muebles Morris y la desmont. Trabajaba con prisa frentica, febril. Ahora que por fin haba puesto manos a la obra, no quera perder tiempo. Un momento despus estaba pegando dos pequeos edificios en lugar del anterior: Limpiabotas Ritz, La Bolera de Pete. Haskel lanz una risita, excitado. Una muerte merecida para la lujosa y exclusiva tienda de muebles. Un puesto de limpiabotas y una bolera. Justo lo que mereca. El Banco Estatal de California. Siempre haba odiado el banco. En cierta ocasin le haban negado un prstamo. Lo arranc. La mansin de Ed Tildon. Su maldito perro. El perro le haba mordido en el tobillo una tarde. Desmont la maqueta. La cabeza le daba vueltas. Poda hacer lo que le viniera en gana. Electrodomsticos Harrison. Le haban vendido una radio averiada. Al infierno Electrodomsticos Harrison. Artculos de Fumador Joe. El dueo le haba dado una moneda de 25 centavos falsa en mayo de 1949. Al infierno con l. La fbrica de tinta. Detestaba el olor a tinta. Lo mejor sera sustituirla por un horno de pan. Le encantaba hornear pan. Al infierno la fbrica de tinta. La calle Elm estaba demasiado oscura por las noches. Haba tropezado un par de veces. Necesitaba ms farolas. No haba bastantes bares en la calle High. Demasiadas boutiques, sombrereras caras, peleteras y tiendas para mujeres. Las desprendi de un solo manotazo y las deposit sobre el banco de trabajo. La puerta del stano se abri poco a poco. Madge se asom, p-lida y asustada. Verne? Haskel la mir con el ceo fruncido, impaciente. Qu quieres? Madge baj, vacilante, seguida por el doctor Tyler, apuesto y elegante en su traje gris. Verne... Todo va bien? Por supuesto. De veras..., de veras has dejado tu trabajo? Haskel asinti con la cabeza. Empez a desmontar la fbrica de tinta, sin hacer caso de su mujer ni del doctor Tyler. Pero, por qu? No tengo tiempo gru Haskel, impaciente. El doctor Tyler empez a mostrarse preocupado. Debo entender que ests demasiado ocupado para ir a trabajar? Exacto. Demasiado ocupado en qu? El doctor Tyler alz la voz. Temblaba de nerviosismo. Trabajando en tu ciudad de aqu abajo, cambiando cosas? Lrgate murmur Haskel. Sus diestras manos estaban montando un pequeo y encantador horno de pan Langendorf. Le dio forma con cario, lo pulveriz con pintura blanca y dispuso en la parte delantera un sendero de grava y algunos arbustos. Lo dej a un lado y se dedic a construir un parque. Un gran parque verde. Woodland siempre haba necesitado un parque. Sustituira el hotel de la calle State. Tyler apart a Madge de la mesa y le indic que se quedara en un rincn del stano.
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Santo Dios. Encendi un cigarrillo con dedos temblorosos. El cigarrillo res-bal de sus manos y rod por el suelo. Sin hacer caso, encendi otro. Lo ves? Ves lo que est haciendo? Madge sacudi la cabeza, casi incapaz de hablar. Qu es? Yo no... Cunto tiempo lleva trabajando en esto? Toda su vida? S, toda su vida corrobor Madge, plida. Dios mo, Madge. Tyler tena el rostro descompuesto. Es su-ficiente para volverte loca. Apenas puedo creerlo. Debemos hacer algo. Qu est pasando? gimi Madge. Qu...? Se est hundiendo cada vez ms en su propia obsesin. Una mscara de incrdulo asombro cubra el rostro de Tyler. Siempre ha bajado aqu vacil Madge. No es nada nuevo. Siempre ha querido huir. S, huir. Tyler se estremeci, cerr los puos y se seren. Cruz el stano y se aproxim a Verne Haskel. Qu quieres? murmur Haskel al advertir su presencia. Tyler se humedeci los labios. Ests aadiendo algunas cosas, verdad? Nuevos edificios. Haskel asinti con la cabeza. Tyler toc el pequeo horno de pan con dedos temblorosos. Qu es esto? Un horno de pan? Dnde est situado? Cami-n alrededor de la mesa. No recuerdo que Woodland tenga un horno de pan. Gir sobre sus talones. No estars, por casuali-dad, mejorando la ciudad, haciendo algunos cambios? Largo de aqu dijo Haskel, con amenazadora calma. Los dos. Verne! grazn Madge. Tengo muchas cosas que hacer. Bjame unos bocadillos hacia las once. Espero terminar esta noche. Terminar? pregunt Tyler. Terminar contest Haskel, volviendo a su trabajo. Vamos, Madge. Tyler la tom por el brazo y la arrastr hacia la escalera. Salgamos de aqu. Pas delante de ella, subi la es-calera y sali al vestbulo. Vamos! En cuanto Madge lleg arriba, cerr la puerta a sus espaldas. Madge se frot los ojos histricamente. Se ha vuelto loco, Paul! Qu vamos a hacer? Tyler estaba abismado en sus pensamientos. Tranquilzate. Debo pensarlo bien. Pase de un lado a otro, con el ceo fruncido. Ocurrir pronto. A esta velocidad, no tardar mucho. En cualquier momento de esta noche. Qu? A qu te refieres? Su retirada a ese mundo substituto. El modelo mejorado que se halla bajo su control, al que puede escapar. No podemos hacer nada? Hacer? Tyler sonri levemente. Queremos hacer algo? Madge trag saliva. Pero no podemos... Tal vez esto solucione nuestro problema. Tal vez sea lo que buscbamos. Tyler mir a la seora Haskel con aire pensativo. Tal vez sea lo ideal. Eran casi las dos de la madrugada cuando Haskel hizo los toques finales. Estaba cansado..., pero bien despierto. Los acontecimientos se precipitaban. El trabajo estaba casi terminado. Prcticamente perfecto. Dej de trabajar un momento para inspeccionar sus logros. La ciudad haba experimentado un cambio radical. A las diez haba ini-ciado alteraciones en la estructura bsica del trazado
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de las calles. Haba eliminado la mayora de los edificios pblicos, la zona para peatones y el distrito comercial en plena expansin que lo rodeaba. Haba erigido un ayuntamiento y una comisara de polica nuevos, as como un inmenso parque con fuentes y luces indirectas. Haba despejado los barrios bajos, las antiguas tiendas en decadencia, las casas y las calles. Las calles eran ms amplias y estaban mejor iluminadas. Las casas eran pequeas y limpias. Las tiendas, modernas y atractivas..., sin llegar a ser ostentosas. Haba quitado todos los letreros publicitarios y la mayora de las gasolineras. Haba sustituido la inmensa zona destinada a las fbri-cas por una ondulada campia: rboles, colinas y hierba verde. El barrio de los ricos tambin haba sido alterado. Slo queda-ban algunas mansiones, las pertenecientes a personas que le caan bien. Las restantes haban sido reducidas a viviendas idnticas de dos habitaciones, una planta y un nico garaje. El ayuntamiento de la ciudad ya no era un edificio rococ y re-cargado, sino una estructura baja y sencilla, a imitacin del Partenn, uno de sus favoritos. Haba unas diez o doce personas que le haban perjudicado de forma especial. Haba alterado sus casas considerablemente. Les haba concedido unos apartamentos del tiempo de la guerra, seis por edificio, en el extremo ms alejado de la ciudad, donde el vien-to soplaba desde la baha y transportaba el hedor de las marismas. La casa de Jim Larson haba desaparecido por completo. Haba borrado del mapa a Larson. En esta nueva Woodland, casi termina-da, ya no exista. Casi terminada. Haskel examin su obra con suma atencin. To-dos los cambios deban efectuarse ahora. Era el momento de la creacin. Luego, cuando hubiera acabado, ya no podra alterarse. Tena que realizar ahora todos los cambios necesarios..., o bien ol-vidarlos. La nueva Woodland tena un aspecto excelente. Limpia, pulcra..., y sencilla. El distrito rico haba sido rebajado de tono. El distrito pobre, por el contrario, haba experimentado mejoras. Todos los letreros, enseas y anuncios luminosos haban sido cambiados o eliminados. El centro comercial era ms pequeo. Parques y cam-pos sustituan a las fbricas. La zona para peatones era encanta-dora. Aadi un par de parques infantiles para los nios pequeos. Un cine de escasa capacidad en lugar del enorme Uptown, con su le-trero de nen. Despus de algunas reflexiones, elimin la mayora de bares que haba construido. La nueva Woodland iba a ser de una moralidad a toda prueba. Pocos bares, y nada de billares o barrios de prostitutas. Y una crcel a la medida de los indeseables. Lo ms costoso haba sido dibujar las letras microscpicas de la puerta principal del ayuntamiento. Lo dej para el final. Pint las letras con agonizante minuciosidad: Alcalde Vernon R. Haskel Hizo algunos cambios de ltima hora. Adjudic a los Edwards un Plymouth de 1939, en lugar del nuevo Cadillac. Aadi ms rboles al centro. Un nuevo parque de bomberos. Una boutique menos. Nun-ca le haban gustado los taxis. Llevado por un impulso, quit la pa-rada de taxis y puso una florera. Haskel se frot las manos. Algo ms? Tal vez estaba comple-ta... Perfecta... Examin cada pieza con la mayor atencin. Habra pasado algo por alto? La escuela superior. La quit y puso dos ms pequeas, una en cada extremo de la ciudad. Otro hospital. Tard casi media hora. Empezaba a sentirse cansado. Sus manos actuaban con menor velocidad. Se frot la frente tembloroso. Algo ms? Se sent en el taburete para descansar y pensar. Todo terminado. Completo. Le embarg una inmensa alegra. Un grito de felicidad bailaba en la punta de su lengua. Su obra estaba acabada.
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He terminado! chill Verne Haskel. Se puso en pie, tambaleante. Cerr los ojos, extendi los brazos y avanz hacia la mesa de madera terciada. Haskel se dirigi hacia ella con dedos ansiosos. Su rostro arrugado y avejentado transpa-rentaba una radiante exaltacin. Tyler y Madge oyeron el grito, un lejano estruendo que recorri la casa de un extremo a otro. Madge se encogi visiblemente aterrorizada. Qu ha sido eso? Tyler escuch con atencin. Oy que Haskel se mova en el s-tano. Apag el cigarrillo bruscamente. Creo que ya ha sucedido. Antes de lo que yo esperaba... Te refieres a que...? Tyler se puso en pie de un salto. Se ha ido, Madge. A su otro mundo. Por fin somos libres. Madge le tom por el brazo. Quiz nos equivoquemos. Esto es terrible. No deberamos... hacer algo? Sacarle de ah... Intentar devolverle a la realidad. Devolverle a la realidad? Tyler lanz una carcajada nervio-sa. Creo que ya es imposible, aunque quisiramos. Es demasiado tarde. Corri hacia la puerta del stano. Es horrible. Madge se estremeci y le sigui a regaadientes. Ojal no nos hubiramos involucrado. Tyler se detuvo un momento en la puerta. Horrible? Ahora es ms feliz, donde se encuentre. Y t tam-bin. Nadie lo era antes. Es lo mejor que poda pasar. Abri la puerta del stano. Madge le sigui. Bajaron la escalera con cautela y penetraron en el oscuro y silencioso stano de paredes hmedas. El stano estaba desierto. Tyler se relaj. Una mezcla de alivio y estupor se apoder de l. Se ha ido. Todo va bien. Ha salido a pedir de boca.
No lo entiendo repiti Madge, desesperada, mientras el Buick de Tyler recorra las oscuras calles vacas. Adnde ha ido? Ya sabes adnde respondi Tyler. A su mundo substituto, por supuesto. Tom una curva so dos ruedas. El resto ser muy sencillo. Unos trmites de rutina. Ya no queda mucho por hacer. La noche era lbrega y fra, apenas iluminada por alguna farola ocasional. Un tren emiti a lo lejos un fnebre silbido. Filas de casas silenciosas pasaban a ambos lados del coche. Adnde vamos? pregunt Madge. Estaba recostada contra la puerta, plida de terror. Temblaba como una hoja. A la comisara de polica. Para qu? Para informar que ha desaparecido, por supuesto. Tendre-mos que esperar varios aos antes que le declaren legalmente muerto. Tyler alarg el brazo y la acarici un momento. Mientras tanto, nos las arreglaremos, estoy seguro. Y si... le encuentran? Tyler sacudi la cabeza, irritado. Los nervios an no le haban abandonado. Es que no lo entiendes? Nunca le encontrarn: no existe. En nuestro mundo no, al menos. Se encuentra en el suyo. T lo viste. En la maqueta, el substituto mejorado. Est all? Se ha pasado toda la vida trabajando en la maqueta, constru-yndola, transformndola en algo real. l logr que ese mundo co-brara existencia..., y ahora est en l. Es lo que deseaba. Por eso lo construy. No se limit a soar con un mundo de fantasa. Lo cons-truy..., pieza a pieza, fragmento a fragmento. Ahora, se ha despla-zado de nuestro mundo al suyo. Ha salido de nuestras vidas.
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Madge empez a comprender. Por lo tanto, fue absorbido literalmente por ese mundo alterna-tivo. A eso te referas cuando dijiste que quera... huir. Tard un poco en darme cuenta. La mente construye la reali-dad. La moldea. La crea. Todos compartimos una realidad, un sueo, pero Haskel volvi la espalda a nuestra realidad comn y cre una propia. Y posea una capacidad nica, extraordinaria. Dedic toda su vida y toda su habilidad a construirla. Ahora se encuentra en ella. Tyler vacil y frunci el ceo. Aferr el volante con determina-cin y aceler. El Buick corri como una flecha por la oscura calle, atravesando la negrura silenciosa e inmvil que era la ciudad. Hay algo que todava no entiendo prosigui. Qu es? La maqueta. Tambin ha desaparecido. Supuse que l se ha-ba... encogido, por as decirlo. Se haba fundido con ella. Pero la maqueta tambin ha desaparecido. Tyler se encogi de hombros. Da igual. Escudri la oscuridad. Casi hemos llegado. sa es la calle Elm. Fue entonces cuando Madge chill. Mira! A la derecha del vehculo se vea un pequeo y pulcro edificio. Y un letrero. El letrero poda leerse con toda facilidad en la pe-numbra. Funeraria de Woodland Madge solloz horrorizada. El coche salt hacia adelante, guia-do automticamente por las manos entumecidas de Tyler. Mientras pasaban frente al ayuntamiento, otro letrero destell durante unos segundos. Tienda de Mascotas Steuben El ayuntamiento estaba baado por luces ocultas en algunos huecos. Se trataba de un edificio bajo y sencillo, un cuadrado blan-co y resplandeciente. Como un templo de mrmol griego. Tyler fren el coche, grit y encendi de nuevo el motor. Pero no con bastante rapidez. Los dos relucientes coches negros de la polica flanquearon en silencio el Buick, uno a cada lado. Los cuatro severos policas ya tenan las manos en la puerta. Descendieron y avanzaron hacia l, sombros y eficientes.
FIN Ttulo Original: Small Town 1954. Escaneado, Revisado y Editado por Arcnido.
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Hipertexto * El fluir del pensamiento.

ammego2 [29-06-07] El navegar nos remite al pensar y del pensamiento pasamos a la estructura narrativa literaria, en cuya teora (de Roland Barthes a Jacques Derrida) tiene lugar la gnesis conceptual del hipertexto. Por ammeg02
En el mbito de la teora literaria la aparicin del hipertexto materializ una serie de aspiraciones expresadas por diferentes tericos de este siglo, al permitir poner en la prctica un tipo de documento cuyas caractersticas lo dotan de una gran flexibilidad en comparacin con el concepto tradicional de texto. Roland Barthes elabora en su obra S/Z, publicada en 1970, la descripcin de un texto ideal en el que desaparecen las fronteras entre autor y lector, al exigrsele a este ltimo un papel mucho ms activo en la construccin del significado del texto. Gran parte de la terminologa utilizada en el anlisis y la descripcin del hipertexto ha sido tomada de los escritos de este autor (nexos, nodo, red, trama, trayecto). Jacques Derrida, en su libro Speech and Phenomena, expresa su concepcin de la textualidad como montaje en el sentido cinematogrfico, yuxtaponiendo diferentes unidades cuyos significados individuales son radicalmente diferentes del significado del conjunto. Desde el punto de vista de la teora deconstructivista, que no concibe nicamente los documentos impresos, sino el entorno en general como texto que debe ser interpretado por cada lector, la capacidad del hipertexto para asimilar elementos textuales o no textuales y creados o no como obras literarias es significativamente atractiva. Mela Dvila, <a id=link_0 title=http://www.mecad.org href=http://www.mecad.org/>Hipertexto El navegar nos remite al pensar y del pensamiento pasamos a la estructura narrativa literaria, en cuya teora (de Roland Barthes Como Barthes, Michel Foucault concibe el texto en forma de redes y nexos. En Archeology of Knowledge, afirma que las fronteras de un libro nunca estn claramente definidas, ya que se encuentra atrapado en un sistema de referencias a otros libros, otro textos, otras frases: es un nodo dentro de una red... una red de referencias. [<a id=link_3 title=http://foucault.info href=http://foucault.info/>Michel Foucault, <a id=link_2 title=http://serbal.pntic.mec.es/~cmunoz11/tani32.pdf href=http://serbal.pntic.mec.es/%7Ecmunoz11/tani32.pdf>La arqueologa del saber ] Como todos los estructuralistas y postestructuralistas, Barthes y Foucault describen el texto, el mundo de la literatura y las relaciones de poder y categora que implican, en trminos que tambin pueden aplicarse al campo del hipertexto informtico. <a id=link_5 title=http://www.landow.com/ href=http://www.landow.com/>George P. Landow, <a id=link_6 title=http://www.hipertexto.info/documentos/literat.htm href=http://www.hipertexto.info/documentos/literat.htm>Hipertexto. La convergencia de la teora crtica contempornea y la tecnologa a Jacques Derrida) tiene lugar la gnesis conceptual del hipertexto Si nos liberamos de la atadura de la pantalla como una pgina, podremos llegar con ms
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facilidad a ver que la pantalla es un espacio de tres dimensiones, no una superficie de dos. () Lo interesante es que en el espacio digital otra de sus atractivas posibilidades puedo plegar no el papel, sino el texto; y un texto plegado es un hipertexto Chartier, Roger y Antonio Rodrguez de las Heras. 2001. El futuro del libro y el libro del futuro, en Litterae. Cuadernos sobre la cultura escrita, citado por Domnico Chiappe, Herramientas para no perderse en el laberinto, <a id=link_7 title=http://www.cibersociedad.net/congres2006/gts/comunicacio.php?id=178&llengua=g a href=http://www.cibersociedad.net/congres2006/gts/comunicacio.php?id=178&llengua= ga>Cibersociedad que en internet se convierte en sintaxis fundamental El uso del prefijo hiper supone sealar superioridad o exceso de aquello a lo que va unido. Pues bien, ya desde esta consideracin se abren dos caminos para entender el hipertexto: a) como la extensin de un texto a partir de la creacin de relaciones con otros textos, de manera que la lectura pueda pasar sin dificultad de unos a otros; b) como la adquisicin por el texto de una dimensin ms. En la primera interpretacin subyace una visin del texto como tejido. Si el texto es un tejido, un framento sigue siendo un tejido, para seguir formando un tejido ms extenso. La segunda interpretacin est condicionada por una visin geomtrica del hipertexto; de igual modo que hay en matemticas el hiperespacio o espacio de ms de tres dimensiones, y que un hipercubo es un cubo de cuatro dimensiones, un hipertexto sera un texto con 3 dimensiones. Antonio Rodrguez de las Heras, Qu es un (hiper)texto en Roger Chartier [ed.], Qu es un texto? El tamao del fragmento que constituye la estructura de la Red, presenta una disminucin progresiva que lo conduce hacia la atomizacin y deriva en inconmesurabilidad y diversificacin tal vez el trmino democratizacin sea excesivo, segn a qu pas nos refiramos, teniendo en cuenta el control gubernamental que decenas de gobiernos ejercen sobre el acceso a la Red. Patricia Fernndez de Lis, <a id=link_8 title=http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/25/paises/ejercen/censura/Internet/elpeputec/20 070518elpepisoc_3/Tes href=http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/25/paises/ejercen/censura/Internet/elpeputec/2 0070518elpepisoc_3/Tes>25 pases ejercen la censura en Internet Mi postura es que la historia de la tecnologa de la informacin, desde la escritura hasta el hipertexto, refleja una creciente democratizacin o reparto de poder. George Landow, Hipertexto. La convergencia de la teora crtica contempornea y la tecnologa cada vez ms difciles de abarcar. Esta nueva cultura del tentempi cruza de parte a parte la existencia de los ltimos aos. Es propia del chat, del disco, del videojuego, pero su modelo alcanza casi todos los aspectos, sensoriales o no, en un creciente contagio de la fragmentacin innumerable. En simultaneidad con la globalizacin aparece, cuando no se la esperaba, la presunta paradoja del corte y la particin. Contrariamente a la antigua lgica que aguardara un conocimiento integrado a partir de la mayor intercomunicacin, brota, sin embargo, un saber fragmentado consecuente con un panorama cargado de diversidad y de impactos tan cortos como incontables, tan efmeros como infinitos.Vicente Verd, <a id=link_9 title=http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/feliz/arte/desmenuzarlo/todo/elpepusoc/200705 24elpepisoc_10/Tes
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href=http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/feliz/arte/desmenuzarlo/todo/elpepusoc/200705 24elpepisoc_10/Tes>El feliz arte de desmenuzarlo todo
El recorrido que generamos en internet a travs de los hipervnculos tiene mucho de fluir del pensamiento, tanto por su avance entrecortado, literalmente a saltos, como por su instantaneidad, irrepetibilidad, su carcter abierto, En la lectura del hipertexto se ejecuta el cierre de la ficcin en el momento del cese de la lectura, pero a diferencia del libro, ese final no es la ltima pgina, sino uno de los finales probables en el tiempo, mientras que la narracin contina fuera del discurso. Carlota Fernndez-Juregui Rojas, <a id=link_0 title=http://www.cibersociedad.net/congres2006/gts/comunicacio.php?id=952&llengua=g a href=http://www.cibersociedad.net/congres2006/gts/comunicacio.php?id=952&llengua= ga>Retrica del enlace y del desenlace en la escritura hipertextual, Cibersociedad espontneo, A m es que me parece que a veces hay un montn de cosas interesantes. A m es que me parece que todas las cosas estn unidas entre s. Como si todo estuviera en una tela de araa. Me acabo de encontrar un pequeo saltamontes verde. Lo mato? Javier Salinas, <a id=link_2 title=http://www.comunicacioncultural.com/archivos/2007/05/el_cuaderno_sec.html href=http://www.comunicacioncultural.com/archivos/2007/05/el_cuaderno_sec.html>El cuaderno secreto de Hans su condicin de proceso. Tanto la inventio como la dispositio y la elocutio se darn a la vez en la lectura-creacin del hipertexto cada vez que el escri-lector seleccione un enlace que una dos bloques de informacin. El texto resultante se concluir en la ltima seleccin (en la ltima operacin de inventio-dispositio-elocutio), una vez conseguido el sentido global del texto. El tiempo en el hipertexto es pues, a la vez, sucesivo y lineal en el sentido de que el lenguaje y la lectura tambin lo son; y simultneo-espacial, al realizarse las operaciones de creacin a la par que la configuracin de un discurso que va dibujndose en el espacio de la pantalla mediante las bifurcaciones que el lector crea. Como dice Philippe Quau: La escritura del hipertexto ofrece un caos aparente porque ofrece la impresin de que todo es simultneo, de que adquiere un carcter espacial y que no se somete a la secuencialidad tpica de las lecturas tradicionales. Sin embargo, esto no es sino una apariencia causada por la simultaneidad de informacin ofrecida <a id=link_7 title=http://queau.eu/ href=http://queau.eu/>Philippe Quau, Lo Virtual. Virtudes y vrtigos, citado por Carlota Fernndez-Juregui Rojas, <a id=link_1 title=http://www.cibersociedad.net/congres2006/gts/comunicacio.php?id=952&llengua=g a href=http://www.cibersociedad.net/congres2006/gts/comunicacio.php?id=952&llengua= ga>Retrica del enlace y del desenlace en la escritura hipertextual, Cibersociedad
Se trata de un camino que tal vez tenga un punto de partida previamente determinado
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pero cuya llegada est menos clara (aunque sabemos que existe, como la muerte, se producir de improviso); estar (ahora), haber estado (despus) El recuerdo es la libertad del pasado. Pero lo que es sin presente tampoco acepta el presente de un recuerdo. El recuerdo dice del acontecimiento: esto fue una vez, y ahora nunca ms. <a id=link_4 title=http://notasmoleskine.blogspot.com/2007/06/maurice-blanchot.html href=http://notasmoleskine.blogspot.com/2007/06/maurice-blanchot.html>Maurice Blanchot, La soledad esencial en <a id=link_3 title=http://www.blanchot.info/blanchot/index2.php?option=content&do_pdf=1&id=4 1 href=http://www.blanchot.info/blanchot/index2.php?option=content&do_pdf=1&id=4 1>El espacio literario es lo que importa. Lo que queda, el recuerdo. El descenso mahleriano encuentra la fragmentacin de la memoria, su diferencia abre intersticios en el seno del recuerdo. La resignacin es una forma de la teora de las distancias, que era un elemento de la narracin. <a id=link_6 title=http://fernandocastroflorez.blogspot.com/ href=http://fernandocastroflorez.blogspot.com/>Fernando Castro Flrez, 'Canciones de los nios muertos' en Los dones de la infancia, <a id=link_5 title=http://salonkritik.net/archivo/2005/11/elogio_de_la_pe.php href=http://salonkritik.net/archivo/2005/11/elogio_de_la_pe.php>Elogio de la Pereza.
Todo esto fue recojido en hipertextualidades, vomitonas visuales y otros vicios culturales
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De lo insabido que hace saber...

Sugerido por: Begoa Santa Cecilia [27-06-07] Carmen Gallano Petite, psicoanalista lacaniana, miembro de l'Ecole de la Cause Freudienne escribe este texto partiendo de paralelismos y diferencias entre artista y psicoanalista en esta poca dominada por el capitalismo. Algunos de los temas y artistas revisados por Gallano son, el triunfo del individualismo, el ansia de ser va el tener, patologas, adicciones. Duchamp, Manzoni Mike kelly Bruce nauman, Dan Flavin Jeff koons, Santiago Sierra los hermanos Chapman, Maurizio Catelan, Juan Muoz... <a style=font-weight: bold; href=http://www.causefreudienne.org/>L'Ecole de la Cause Freudienne
Descrgate el documento en PDF clickando en el ngulo inferior izquierdo.
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Del "Arte" a las "prcticas artsticas"

Armando Montesinos [02-06-07] Cuando Mariano Navarro me sugiri que escribiera una reflexin sobre el arte espaol en los aos noventa, mi primera respuesta fue: Los noventa? Pero si no me acuerdo de nada.... 1. No crea el lector que pas esa dcada en los opacos abismos de algn vicio inconfesable, o que padezco an no, afortunadamente una prdida grave de mi facultad para recordar las cosas. Simplemente ocurre que, adems de mi poca aficin a empaquetar experiencias en compartimentos fechados, me resulta difcil pensar en algo que an no se ha retirado del todo del presente, enfocar algo que de tan cercano necesariamente va a resultar borroso o parcial, o extremadamente pequeo e insignificante si pretendemos alejarlo mirndolo desde el otro extremo de los prismticos. Mi segunda respuesta al comisario fue, espero, menos desconcertante que la primera. Dado que muchas voces autorizadas han ido escribiendo, a menudo en tiempo real, sobre los artistas, las exposiciones y los discursos caractersticos de esa dcada, consideraba yo innecesario volver a hacerlo; s pensaba que podra hablarse, de manera general, de una serie de situaciones o sntomas que, a mi parecer, pueden contribuir a definir esos aos. De algunas de las ms importantes la cuestin de gnero y la normalizacin, o casi, de la presencia de las artistas en la escena espaola, y la importancia del vdeo se ocupan en otras pginas de este catlogo Alicia Murria y Juan Antonio Alvarez Reyes. Tratar, pues, de otros ovillos que me parecen relevantes la crtica, la Universidad, las instalaciones, el auge de la fotografa con la esperanza de, al tirar de los hilos, aportar pistas, aunque sean polmicas, sobre el tema. Pido de antemano disculpas por las generalizaciones que puedan parecer groseras, y por la subjetividad de mis opiniones: no soy, ni pretendo ser, historiador, y viv la dcada desde una doble y considerable deformacin profesional, como director de una galera y como profesor universitario. 2. En un artculo que analizaba, sin complacencias, los clausurados aos ochenta, el crtico de arte Kevin Power ya defina as los rasgos de la recin empezada dcada: El arte de los noventa (....) est seriamente interesado por los problemas tericos, entre los que se incluyen las definiciones de la subjetividad del yo (...) Ofrece una imaginativa propuesta con respecto al modo en que la conciencia se enfrenta a la experiencia y la filtra. Utiliza modelos de otras disciplinas, como la ciberntica o la neurologa. Pone en tela de juicio el papel de la cultura y su propia retrica de la visibilidad. Observa la historiografa, la historia como un relato de ficcin. Se opone, sin moralizar, a una sociedad profundamente hedonista, de regreso al barato consumo de las sensaciones inmediatas. Podemos observar claramente la variada integracin de otras culturas en la nuestra (...) El nfasis de la modernidad en la invencin de lenguajes individuales (...) ha derivado hacia un inters por el lenguaje mismo (...) El cambio consiste en pasar de considerar al individuo como centro al reconocimiento de que somos elementos construidos y constructores. Si las problemticas que iban a definir los intereses creativos del futuro inmediato se podan adelantar, con tan limpio diagnstico, en fecha tan temprana como febrero de 1992, podramos acordar que o bien las cosas haban cambiado muy rpidamente en apenas dos o tres temporadas, o que haba unos claros discursos programticos preparados para ser desarrollados [1]. De una u otra manera, tengo para m que la dcada tiene, para el arte espaol, su punto de arranque en mayo de 1989, y en un lugar tan insospechado como la feria de arte (Kunst
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Rai) de msterdam. Antes y despus del entusiasmo (1972-1992) era el ttulo de la exposicin (comisariada por Jos Luis Brea, responsable as mismo del correspondiente libro-catlogo ) [2] que, remontndose a los Encuentros de Pamplona (1972) y al ciclo Nuevos Comportamientos Artsticos (1974), organizado por Simn Marchn, reivindicaba las opciones aisladas que podan representar Valcrcel Medina, Zaj, y el Navarro Baldeweg ms conceptual, y apostaba por una nueva generacin (entre otros, Juan Muoz, Cristina Iglesias, Lpez Cuenca, o los artistas sevillanos ligados a la galera La Mquina Espaola). Al poner entre parntesis el falso entusiasmo de los ochenta y presentarlo como una acrtica vuelta al orden, cuestionaba la pretendida historia oficial reciente de nuestro arte y ofreca una lectura distinta tanto del pasado como de la actualidad del momento. Esa voluntad programtica, arriba citada (que en sus momentos mejores se entrelaza con los discursos y las necesidades de los artistas, y en los menos acertados pretende dirigir o determinar la tarea de stos), es el principal rasgo definitorio del trabajo no slo de Jos Luis Brea [3], sino de una nueva generacin, bastante diferente de la crtica surgida en la transicin. Si sta proceda fundamentalmente de una Historia del Arte que llegaba, a lo sumo, a las vanguardias histricas y planteaba, con las afortunadas y lgicas excepciones, una crtica historicista ligada a estilos y disciplinas y a la figura del artista heroico, que en ocasiones no consegua disimular su desconfianza o su desconcierto ante lo contemporneo, la formacin de los nuevos crticos en Esttica, Bellas Artes o en una actualizada Historia del Arte, y su familiaridad con los discursos postmodernos y con la tradicin (post)minimalista estadounidense, podra autorizar el considerarlos como la primera generacin de tericos del arte espaol. El Instituto de Esttica, dirigido por Jos Jimnez, la Quinzena dArt de Montesquiu, organizada por Florenci Guntn, los seminarios de Arteleku, con Santi Eraso al frente, los Impasse, a cargo de Gloria Picazo fueron, pese a su corta existencia en unos casos, o a su mayor o menor continuidad en otros, determinantes para producir y difundir el pensamiento y la opinin de crticos como Juan Vicente Aliaga, Manel Clot, Luis Francisco Prez, Fernando Castro, Jorge Luis Marzo, Estrella de Diego, Carles Guerra, Ana Mara Guasch, Jos Miguel G. Corts, etc., etc. No puedo, pese a haber estado personalmente implicado, dejar de citar, por constituir un hecho inslito, Los 90: cambio de marcha en el arte espaol, unas jornadas de debate, protagonizadas por varios de esos jvenes crticos, que tuvieron lugar en el stand de la Galera Juana Mord durante la feria de Arco de 1993, y que, con el mismo ttulo y por la propia galera, fueron publicados un ao ms tarde. Que una galera privada, renunciando a los beneficios comerciales de una feria, decidiese dedicar su inversin y su espacio a unos encuentros sobre la situacin del arte espaol dice bastante sobre cmo se perciba la necesidad de ayudar a provocar un sesgo en la manera de entender crticamente los discursos artsticos. 3. Otro aspecto determinante de la dcada es el papel de la Universidad. Por un lado, como hemos visto, de las facultades surge una nueva hornada de crticos y, por otro, la tarea de algunos catedrticos de Historia del Arte o Esttica (Rafael Argullol, Jos Antonio Ramrez, J.F. Yvars, Romn de la Calle, los ya citados Marchn y Jimnez, etc.) como directores o consejeros de colecciones editoriales contribuy a que, aunque fuera con aos de retraso, finalmente comenzaran a ver la luz traducciones de indispensables textos crticos de la contemporaneidad. Pero, muy especialmente, es la conversin a mediados de los ochenta de las antiguas Escuelas de Arte en Facultades de Bellas Artes lo que va a producir un cambio significativo en la formacin de los artistas jvenes. Dicha conversin no fue fcil, ni completa. Como escriba Fernando Sinaga, artista y docente l mismo: Los profesores siguieron siendo los mismos as como las materias que enseaban, aadiendo una progresiva y creciente incorporacin de nuevos docentes y de otras materias como la fotografa, el diseo, la infografa, la crtica, el vdeo y la teora y esttica de las artes como nuevas disciplinas, que venan a insertarse en programas
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generales, en los cuales se segua dibujando, pintando y modelando desnudos y estatuas como eje troncal de la formacin artstica. [...] Con la desaparicin de las titulaciones que se impartan en la dcada anterior de Profesor de Dibujo y su transformacin en las nuevas de Licenciado en Bellas Artes se inici un proceso de cambio en donde los sectores ms renovadores trataron de ir introduciendo nuevas materias tericas que venan a sumarse a las antes mencionadas de tal forma que los viejos ejercicios retinianos de observacin y traslacin del natural a los soportes tradicionales se fueron quedando en algunas facultades no como una opcin nica sino como una opcin entre otras. [...] De todas formas, esta situacin abri la discusin sobre el papel del artista en tiempos donde todava la conciencia de gran parte de nuestras instituciones permaneca sujeta a la inercia de pocas histricas. Afortunadamente, esto no fue una situacin genrica y, frente a lo antes mencionado, la rpida incorporacin de nuevos intelectuales y artistas a otras facultades desde el campo de la crtica y la prctica del arte ha crecido en los ltimos aos en facultades como las de Cuenca, Pontevedra, Granada, Salamanca, y en el caso de Bilbao y Valencia gracias a la clara y determinante actitud progresista de sus departamentos de escultura. [4] Entre esos intelectuales y artistas Sinaga cita a los ya nombrados Aliaga, Corts y Brea, as como a Kosme Baragao, Concha Jerez, Vicente Jarque, Ana Martnez Collado, Natividad Navaln, Daro Corbeira, Horacio Fernndez, Flix Guisasola, Salom Cuesta, Mitsuo Miura, Jos Maldonado, Jaime Lorente, Marina Nez, Simen Saiz, Evaristo Navarro, Natividad Bermejo, Gonzalo Puch, etc., etc. La inmensa mayora son, en el momento de asumir las tareas docentes, profesionales activos en el mundo del arte, que desmienten la manida ecuacin docente = artista (o crtico) fracasado . La tensin se sigue manteniendo entre dos modelos de enseanza: uno cuya base es el oficio de las disciplinas y la academia tradicionales, con el alumno repitiendo la leccin y el modelo del maestro, y otro ms interesado en el desarrollo abierto de sensibilidades ante situaciones del presente, y de preguntas y respuestas a las que no slo el estudiante, sino el propio docente, se enfrenta en su desarrollo profesional. Aunque los conflictos se intensifican puntualmente durante la elaboracin de nuevos planes de estudios, ambas tendencias coexisten durante la dcada, producindose una notable actualizacin del modelo educativo. Nos encontramos as con la primera generacin de artistas que no crece bajo la aplastante sombra de Picasso, o a otro nivel, de El Paso o de Tpies. Esto, que puede sonar ridculo, no lo es, si tenemos en cuenta que todava hay quien sostiene, en muchos estamentos, instituciones o medios de comunicacin, que el arte creado tras esos grandes nombres es irrelevante. Lo cierto es que esta generacin tiene una amplia preparacin y, sobre todo, est al da de lo que sucede en la escena internacional, de la que, pese a las endmicas carencias del mercado patrio, se siente partcipe de pleno derecho. Entre otras cosas, tambin porque, a travs de la nueva red de museos y centros que van surgiendo (sealadamente el Centre Galego de Arte Contempornea (CGAC) y el Espai Poble Nou, dirigidos por Gloria Moure; el Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), el Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofa (MNCARS) y La Fundacin la Caixa, con Mara de Corral al frente, y por supuesto el Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM), de Carmen Alborch y Vicente Todol, se programan exposiciones de elevado inters internacional. No se trata aqu de hacer un listado de los artistas surgidos de las Facultades de Bellas Artes, pero un vistazo a los currculos de los nuevos creadores que durante los noventa expusieron en las Muestras de Arte Joven, en Confrontaciones, en los distintos programas culturales de las diversas autonomas, y que posteriormente se incorporaron al circuito profesional de galeras, demuestra que son un porcentaje mayoritario. Aunque seguir existiendo el artista autodidacta, la Universidad aparece ya como el lugar natural para una formacin artstica compleja. 4. Corra 1991. Me encontraba en la Facultad de Bellas Artes de Cuenca, donde desde haca
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dos aos imparta, junto con Ana Navarrete, la asignatura de Instalaciones, la primera con ese nombre creada en Espaa, y que haba generado, y seguira ocasionando durante aos, problemas de encaje como los explicitados por Sinaga. Entabl conversacin casual con un compaero profesor, y la charla nos llev a la actualidad expositiva del momento. Me dijo: Desengate, Montesinos. Un bodegn siempre ser un bodegn, pero una instalacin siempre ser una mierda. Me limit, claro, a sealar que el silogismo no estaba bien planteado. La tremenda virulencia con la que, desde muchos estamentos, se recibi a la libre prctica artstica de la instalacin es, posiblemente, una de las ms interesantes reacciones que se han dado recientemente en el arte contemporneo, que creo slo tiene paralelismo en la tremenda resistencia, que hoy nos parece lejana y grotesca, que se opuso al arte abstracto. El carcter hbrido de la instalacin es ciertamente escurridizo. Por un lado, algunos consideran que es una manifestacin multidisciplinar, lo que les lleva a una idea de acumulacin y de arte total que les retrotrae ni ms ni menos que a Wagner. Por otro, hay quienes la entienden como adisciplinar, es decir, como prctica no preocupada por cdigos formales especficos, sino por una tarea de investigacin de las relaciones del arte con sus contextos, sean estos sociales, espaciales o polticos. En el fondo, se tratara simplemente de un problema de gnero disciplinar, pero eso, para muchos, es una cuestin ni ms ni menos de principios. En su ya clsico texto La escultura en el campo expandido [5] , adems de trazar un mapa de las nuevas prcticas que escapaban de las disciplinas tradicionales, Rosalind Krauss previene sobre la manipulacin historicista, que convierte lo nuevo en cmodo hacindolo familiar al situarlo, aunque sea a presin, en una genealoga que lo conecta con el pasado ya aceptado. Esta tendencia es evidente en el texto, dir tambin ya clsico, Contra las instalaciones: la violencia del espectculo [6] . Conectando en una misma ininterrumpida lnea todos los males vanguardistas, como el prefascismo de Marinetti, los trucos de barraca de feria de los surrealistas, y las piezas de los minimalistas, que se apoderaban agresivamente del espacio disponible, y afirmando que con su Rueda de Bicicleta, Duchamp fundaba el arte cintico o que en los happenings se insista en el evangelio marinettiano (pobre Kaprow!), el profesor Solana denunciaba que las instalaciones eran el hipergnero dominante. Pero tras esta curiosa genealoga lo que se nos viene encima es la descripcin del mayor pavor fsico imaginable: las instalaciones querran conquistar el Sancta Sanctorum de la intimidad, mi vivencia de mi cuerpo, para someterla a manipulaciones experimentales; son como recintos rituales donde el espectador aporta el cuerpo para el sacrificio, se tragan vivo a su husped [...], a veces el visitante correoso es vomitado enseguida, poco o nada digerido. Otras veces la ingestin, el secuestro del cuerpo, logra su propsito, que es bloquear la respuesta libre [...]. Tal era el efecto que, en los estertores del siglo XX, le causaban a Solana las instalaciones, en las que se perpeta la inveterada inquina vanguardista contra la distancia contemplativa, condicin esencial de lo esttico, y contra la libertad de juicio. En realidad, esa delirante fantasa canbal no hace sino desvelar la aterrorizada reaccin de un desvalido cuerpo aislado, replegado sobre s, reprimido, ajeno y separado del tejido vital del cuerpo social, ante la realidad fsica de un mundo que vena percibiendo desde una protectora distancia contemplativa. Porque ha sido precisamente la tradicin academicista que Solana defiende la que ha venido secuestrando el cuerpo del espectador, reducindolo a la por muy educada y desarrollada que sea mera visualidad, a la forzada inmovilidad de un supuestamente aventajado y seguro punto de vista. Permtaseme traer a colacin a Henri Matisse para quitarle hierro a lo que no es sino una diferencia de criterios. El gran maestro dijo una frase que, sospechosa del delito de lesa burguesa, no ha dejado de utilizarse en su contra: el arte tena que ser como un silln. Pero, atencin, Matisse no dijo que el arte tena que verse desde un silln.
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La relacin de las instalaciones con el mercado fue tambin ambigua. Si bien eran consideradas obras incmodas para ser coleccionadas, por su complejidad de montaje, su volumen o su carcter efmero, lo cierto es que contribuyeron a propiciar cambios en las reglas econmicas del mundo del arte, al contemplarse, de modo cada vez ms normalizado, que la produccin de la obra no corriese a cargo del artista, como vena siendo tradicional cuando se trataba de obras realizadas en su estudio, sino a cargo de la galera o institucin donde se presentaban. Su concepcin, ligada a una relacin especfica con el lugar, su ejecucin a menudo in situ, contribuyeron tambin a percibir el montaje como parte fundamental del proceso expositivo y a valorar la indispensable presencia en el acto creativo, digamos en tiempo real, del artista. As, el papel del creador empieza a ensancharse, al entenderse no slo como el de un fabricante de objetos, sino como un generador de experiencias. 5. Si las instalaciones fueron recibidas con la hostilidad reseada, la aparicin en galeras y museos de arte contemporneo de la fotografa fue harina de otro costal. Como escrib en su momento, el mercado del arte ha sido el ltimo mbito social en ser contaminado por la construccin fotogrfica de la realidad, con bastante retraso con respecto a la publicidad o la prensa, por ejemplo. A la inversa, el mercado del arte no es sino una contaminacin ms de las experimentadas por la fotografa. [7] Recluida en su mundo particular de especialistas, pero con ciertas ventajas, como las derivadas de su conexin con la industria comercial o periodstica, de un no despreciable mercado vintage propio, o de su autopercepcin como una cultura especfica y, por ello un punto elitista (todava hoy se mantiene un Premio Nacional exclusivo para fotografa, mientras las dems disciplinas se agrupan en un genrico Artes Plsticas), la fotografa se encontraba, ciertamente, en la periferia del mundo y el mercado del arte. La reticencia inicial enunciada como pero es la fotografa arte? estaba ligada bsicamente al status de la obra de arte como objeto nico original en su doble vertiente de valor econmico y de privilegiar la manualidad irrepetible del artista y a la fotografa entendida como mero reportaje, es decir, como simple mediante los fciles recursos de lo tecnolgico captura de la verdad, y no como compleja construccin de representacin. Dos estrategias permitieron convertir rpidamente a esas ideas firmemente establecidas en caducos prejuicios. Por un lado, la sabrosa distincin entre fotgrafo y artista que utiliza la fotografa; por otro, la asuncin por estos ltimos de formatos caractersticos del arte, desde los grandes tamaos en modernos soportes, como las en un momento ubicuas cajas de luz, a las tiradas reducidas o al propio ejemplar nico. A ello, claro, hay que aadir el componente esencialmente figurativo de la fotografa, que puede permitir una lectura superflua, y que la sociedad actual est bsicamente educada de manera ms pavloviana que alfabetizada en lo visual. Fue sin duda esta integracin ordenada en la lgica del mercado del arte la que llev a su rpida recepcin, porque lo cierto es que en Espaa, donde la propia historia de la fotografa ha brillado por su ausencia fuera del propio crculo de los fotgrafos, la carencia de una teora contempornea de lo fotogrfico era total. Las cosas fueron cambiando en pocos aos. Paralelamente a la primero tmida una exposicin por temporada a lo sumo pero luego imparable presencia de la fotografa en las galeras, fueron desarrollndose propuestas con contenidos tericos. Algunos ejemplos: al empezar la dcada Estrella de Diego coordin un monogrfico de la Revista de Occidente [8] ; en 1992, Jos Lebrero comisari, en el Centre dArt Santa Mnica y en el Crculo de Bellas Artes, Cmaras indiscretas, sobre el influyente grupo de Vancouver, cuyos miembros participaron en unos valiosos debates; ese mismo ao, en la Caixa, se presenta la nueva escuela alemana en Einsamkeit, comisariada por Olivares & Nusser, quienes realizan tambin Los gneros de la pintura. Una visin actual, una amplia panormica internacional, en el CAAM, en 1994, antes de fundar, ya en el ao 2000, la revista especializada EXIT; Alberto Martn edita, en 1996, en la Universidad de Salamanca,
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el primer nmero de Papel Alpha; al ao siguiente Joan Fontcuberta sin duda uno de los nombres fundamentales de nuestra fotografa contempornea publica El beso de Judas [9], y mientras que la Primavera Fotogrfica de Barcelona, organizada por Chantal Grande y David Ballcells, se agota tras una pionera travesa del desierto, el festival PhotoEspaa aprovecha el propicio momento de auge y surge con gran xito meditico en 1998. De imprescindible hemos de calificar a la antologa Indiferencia Y Singularidad. En su ejemplar texto introductorio, los editores, tras reconocer coincidiendo con autores como Victor Burgin o Jeff Wall la dificultad de establecer una teora de la fotografa, dificultad que viene dada por la peculiar flexibilidad y permeabilidad del medio, por su condicin ambigua e hbrida que le ha llevado a desempear funciones dispares a lo largo de su historia, definen impecablemente el actual estado escindido de la imagen fotogrfica: Al escoger como ttulo de esta antologa los trminos indiferencia y singularidad queramos dar cuenta de este aspecto y subrayar su importancia, preservando la ambigedad paradjica del medio. Indiferencia apunta a la indiscriminacin mecnica del registro fotogrfico y, por extensin, sugiere una cultura de la imagen dominada por el signo de la sobreabundancia; singularidad alude a la especificidad de cada imagen y de la propia tcnica fotogrfica y a una posibilidad de sentido dentro de esa sobreabundancia. Indiferencia apunta a lo fragmentario de cada instantnea, a su potencialidad; singularidad alude a la inevitable condicin de imgenes (esto es, de representaciones) de cada una de esas instantneas, a su actualidad. [10] 6. Los aos noventa tendrn que ser reevaluados con ms distancia, pero de momento puede hacerse un balance provisional. El campo disciplinar se ha ampliado, a la vez que las discusiones sobre el valor intrnseco de una disciplina o su primaca sobre otras parecen, afortunadamente, haber quedado relegadas al campo de la chchara meditica o mercantil. Los nuevos medios tecnolgicos han sido integrados rpidamente, aunque uno de los ms prometedores, el net art, no despegara ni con la velocidad ni la intensidad anunciada por sus profetas, aunque no hay que olvidar que tambin el vdeo tuvo una larga latencia hasta su eclosin en la dcada que nos ocupa. La crtica, al centrarse tanto o ms en el estudio de las condiciones de la produccin creativa que en sus formas, ha sido determinante en el cuestionamiento del funcionamiento de la Institucin Arte. Se ha intensificado una actitud de compromiso e interaccin con la realidad social, y con ella se detecta un escoramiento hacia una produccin menos ligada al objeto, herencia del arte conceptual, cuyo espritu crtico parece haberse recuperado en estos aos El final de la dcada nos dej en el umbral de importantes cambios. En un momento en el que la estetizacin superficial de la sociedad de consumo difunde la consigna todo es arte, la hegeliana muerte del Arte, puesta en el tapete por los tericos, plantea la evidente necesidad de la sustitucin de un sistema de creencias por otro de produccin de conocimiento. El lugar del artista en la sociedad necesita una profunda reevaluacin. Muchos entendemos que su funcin es ms necesaria que nunca, y confiamos en la potencialidad transformadora de las prcticas artsticas.
--------------1/ Kevin Power, La ligereza de los ochenta, Revista de Occidente, n 129, Madrid, Febrero 1992, pags. 107-108. 2/ Jos Luis Brea, Antes y despus del entusiasmo, SDU Publishers, The Hague/ Contemporary Art Foundation, msterdam. 1989. 3/ Brea fue, sin duda, una de las figuras fundamentales del pensamiento y la crtica de arte
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en los aos que nos ocupan. Posiblemente su libro Las auras fras (finalista del Premio Anagrama de Ensayo 1991) fuera determinante para propiciar el inters de muchos filsofos por el arte contemporneo, y de muchos artistas por la teora. 4/ Fernando Sinaga. El arte y su docencia. Espaa 1985-1995, en VV. AA., Lescola invisible. Tallers de la QUAM 1988-1994. Diputaci de Barcelona, 1995, pgs. 113-119. 5/ Rosalind Krauss, La escultura en el campo expandido, en La originalidad de la vanguardia y otros mitos modernos. Alianza Forma, Madrid, 1996. Tambin en Hal Foster (ed.), La posmodernidad. Kairs, Barcelona, 1986. 6/ Guillermo Solana, Contra las instalaciones: la violencia del Revista, n 47, Octubre-Noviembre 1996, pgs. 115-123. espectculo, Nueva
7/ Armando Montesinos, La muerte de la fotografa?, ABC Cultural, n 495, 21 julio 2001, pg. 42. 8/ Estrella de Diego (ed.), Fotografa, Revista de Occidente, n 127, Madrid, Diciembre 1991. 9/ Joan Fontcuberta, El beso de Judas. Fotografa y verdad, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1977. 10/ Gloria Picazo y Jorge Ribalta (ed.), Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa en el pensamiento artstico contemporneo, Llibres de Recerca 4, MACBA, Barcelona, 1997, pag. 13.
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Jacques Lacan, Seminar on The Purloined Letter

Jacques Lacan (E.S.P.) [30-06-07] Our inquiry has led us to the point of recognizing that the repetition automatism (Wiederholangszwang ) finds its basis in what we have called the insistence of the signifying chain. Und wenn es uns gluckt, Und wenn es sich schickt, So sind es Gedanken. We have elaborated that notion itself as a correlate of the ex-sistence (or: eccentric place) in which we must necessarily locate the subject of the unconscious if we are to take Freud's discovery seriously. As is known, it is in the realm of experience inaugurated by psychoanalysis that we may grasp along what imaginary lines the human organism, in the most intimate recesses of its being, manifests its capture in a symbolic dimension. The lesson of this seminar is intended to maintain that these imaginary incidences, far from representing the essence of our experience, reveal only what in it remains inconsistent unless they are related to the symbolic chain which binds and orients them. We realize, of course, the importance of these imaginary impregnations (Prgung ) in those partializations of the symbolic alternative which give the symbolic chain its appearance. But we maintain that it is the specific law of that chain which governs those psychoanalytic effects thar are decisive for the subject: such as foreclosure (Verwerfung), repression (Verdrngung ), denial (Verneinung ) itselfspecifying with appropriate emphasis that these effects follow so faithfully the displacement (Entstellang ) of the signifier that imaginary factors, despite their inertia, figure only as shadows and reflections in the process. But this emphasis would be lavished in vain, if it served, in your opinion, only to abstract a general type from phenomena whose particularity in our work would remain the essential thing for you, and whose original arrangement could be broken up only artificially. Which is why we have decided to illustrate for you today the truth which may be drawn from that moment in Freud's thought under studynamely, that it is the symbolic order which is constitutive for the subjectby demonstrating in a story the decisive orientation which the subject receives from the itinerary of a signifier. It is that truth, let us note, which makes the very existence of fiction possible. And in that case, a fable is as appropriate as any other narrative for bringing it to lightat the risk of having the fable's coherence put to the test in the process. Aside from that reservation, a fictive tale even has the advantage of manifesting symbolic necessity more purely to the extent that we may believe its conception arbitrary. Which is why, without seeking any further, we have chosen our example from the very story in which the dialectic of the game of even or oddfrom whose study we have but recently profitedoccurs. It is, no doubt, no accident that this tale revealed itself propitious to pursuing a course of inquiry which had already found support in it.
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As you know, we are talking about the tale which Baudelaire translated under the title La lettre vole. At first reading, we may distinguish a drama, its narration, and the conditions of that narration. We see quickly enough, moreover, that these components are necessary and that they could not have escaped the intentions of whoever composed them. The narration, in fact, doubles the drama with a commentary without which no mise en scene would be possible. Let us say that the action would remain, properly speaking, invisible from the pitaside from the fact that the dialogue would be expressly and by dramatic necessity devoid of whatever meaning it might have for an audience: in other words, nothing of the drama could be grasped, neither seen nor heard, without, dare we say, the twilighting which the narration, in each scene, casts on the point of view that one of the actors had while performing it. There are two scenes, the first of which we shall straightway designate the primal scene, and by no means inadvertently, since the second may be considered its repetition in the very sense we are considering today. The primal scene is thus performed, we are told, in the royal boudoir, so that we suspect that the person of the highest rank, called the exalted personage, who is alone there when she receives a letter, is the Queen. This feeling is confirmed by the embarrassment into which she is plunged by the entry of the other exalted personage, of whom we have already been told prior to this account that the knowledge he might have of the letter in question would jeopardize for the lady nothing less than her honor and safety. Any doubt that he is in fact the King is promptly dissipated in the course of the scene which begins with the entry of the Minister D. At that moment, in fact, the Queen can do no better than to play on the King's inattentiveness by leaving the letter on the table face down, address uppermost. It does not, however, escape the Minister's Iynx eye, nor does he fail to notice the Queen's distress and thus to fathom her secret. From then on everything transpires like clockwork. After dealing in his customary manner with the business of the day, the Minister draws from his pocket a letter similar in appearance to the one in his view, and, having pretended to read it, he places it next to the other. A bit more conversation to amuse the royal company, whereupon, without flinching once, he seizes the embarrassing letter, making off with it, as the Queen, on whom none of his maneuver has been lost, remains unable to intervene for fear of attracting the attention of her royal spouse, close at her side at that very moment. Everything might then have transpired unseen by a hypothetical spectator of an operation in which nobody falters, and whose quotient is that the Minister has filched from the Queen her letter and thatan even more important result than the firstthe Queen knows that he now has it, and by no means innocently. A remainder that no analyst will neglect, trained as he is to retain whatever is significant, without always knowing what to do with it: the letter, abandoned by the Minister, and which the Queen's hand is now free to roll into a ball. Second scene: in the Minister's office. It is in his hotel, and we knowfrom the account the Prefect of Police has given Dupin, whose specific genius for solving enigmas Poe introduces here for the second timethat the police, returning there as soon as the Minister's habitual, nightly absences allow them to, have searched the hotel and its surroundings from top to bottom for the last eighteen months. In vainalthough everyone can deduce from the
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situation that the Minister keeps the letter within reach. Dupin calls on the Minister. The latter receives him with studied nonchalance, affecting in his conversation romantic ennui. Meanwhile Dupin, whom this pretense does not deceive, his eyes protected by green glasses, proceeds to inspect the premises. When his glance catches a rather crumpled piece of paperapparently thrust carelessly into a division of an ugly pasteboard card rack, hanging gaudily from the middle of the mantelpiecehe already knows that he's found what he's looking for. His conviction is reinforced by the very details which seem to contradict the description he has of the stolen letter, with the exception of the format, which remains the same. Whereupon he has but to withdraw, after forgetting his snuffbox on the table, in order to return the following day to reclaim itarmed with a facsimile of the letter in its present state. As an incident in the street, prepared for the proper moment, draws the Minister to the window, Dupin in turn seizes the opportunity to snatch the letter while substituting the imitation and has only to maintain the appearances of a normal exit. Here as well all has transpired, if not without noise, at least without any commotion. The quotient of the operation is that the Minister no longer has the letter, but far from suspecting that Dupin is the culprit who has ravished it from him, knows nothing of it. Moreover, what he is left with is far from insignificant for what follows. We shall return to what brought Dupin to inscribe a message on his counterfeit letter. Whatever the case, the Minister, when he tries to make use of it, will be able to read these words, written so that he may recognize Dupin's hand: . . . Un dessein si funeste / S'il n'est digne d'Atre est digne de Thyeste, whose source, Dupin tells us, is Crebillon's Atre. Need we emphasize the similarity of these two sequences? Yes, for the resemblance we have in mind is not a simple collection of traits chosen only in order to delete their difference. And it would not be enough to retain those common traits at the expense of the others for the slightest truth to result. It is rather the intersubjectivity in which the two actions are motivated that we wish to bring into relief, as well as the three terms through which it structures them. The special status of these terms results from their corresponding simultaneously to the three logical moments through which the decision is precipitated and the three places it assigns to the subjects among whom it constitutes a choice. That decision is reached in a glance's time.1 For the maneuvers which follow, however stealthily they prolong it, add nothing to that glance, nor does the deferring of the deed in the second scene break the unity of that moment. This glance presupposes two others, which it embraces in its vision of the breach left in their fallacious complementarity, anticipating in it the occasion for larceny afforded by that exposure. Thus three moments, structuring three glances, borne by three subjects, incarnated each time by different characters. The first is a glance that sees nothing: the King and the police. The second, a glance which sees that the first sees nothing and deludes itself as to the secrecy of what it hides: the Queen, then the Minister. The third sees that the first two glances leave what should be hidden exposed to whoever would seize it: the Minister, and finally Dupin.
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In order to grasp in its unity the intersubjective complex thus described, we would willingly seek a model in the technique legendarily attributed to the oserich attempting to shield itself from danger; for that technique might ultimately be qualified as political, divided as it here is among three partners: the second believing itself invisible because the first has its head stuck in the ground, and all the while letting the third calmly pluck its rear; we need only enrich its proverbial denomination by a letter, producing la politique de l'autruiche, for the ostrich itself to take on forever a new meaning. Given the intersubjective modulus of the repetitive action, it remains to recognize in it a repetition automatism in the sense that interests us in Freud's text. The plurality of subjects, of course, can be no objection for those who are long accustomed to the perspectives summarized by our formula: the unconscious is the discourse of the Other. And we will not recall now what the notion of the immixture of subjects, recently introduced in our reanalysis of the dream of Irma's injection, adds to the discussion. What interests us today is the manner in which the subjects relay each other in their displacement during the intersubjective repetition. We shall see that their displacement is determined by the place which a pure signifierthe purloined lettercomes to occupy in their trio. And that is what will confirm for us its status as repetition automatism. It does not, however, seem excessive, before pursuing this line of inquiry, to ask whether the thrust of the tale and the interest we bring to itto the extent that they coincidedo not lie elsewhere. May we view as simply a rationalization (in our gruff jargon) the fact that the story is told to us as a police mystery? In truth, we should be right in judging that fact highly dubious as soon as we note that everything which warrants such mystery concerning a crime or offenseits nature and motives, instruments and execution, the procedure used to discover the author, and the means employed to convict himis carefully eliminated here at the start of each episode. The act of deceit is, in fact, from the beginning as clearly known as the intrigues of the culprit and their effects on his victim. The problem, as exposed to us, is limited to the search for and restitution of the object of that deceit, and it seems rather intentional that the solution is already obtained when it is explained to us. Is that how we are kept in suspense? Whatever credit we may accord the conventions of a genre for provoking a specific interest in the reader, we should not forget that the Dupin talethis the second to appearis a prototype, and that even if the genre were established in the first, it is still a little early for the author to play on a convention. It would, however, be equally excessive to reduce the whole thing to a fable whose moral would be that in order to shield from inquisitive eyes one of those correspondences whose secrecy is sometimes necessary to conjugal peace, it suffices to leave the crucial letters Iying about on one's table, even though the meaningful side be turned face down. For that would be a hoax which, for our part, we would never recommend anyone try, lest he be gravely disappointed in his hopes.
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Might there then be no mystery other than, concerning the Prefect, an incompetence issuing in failurewere it not perhaps, concerning Dupin, a certain dissonance we hesitate to acknowledge between, on the one hand, the admittedly penetrating though, in their generality, not always quite relevant remarks with which he introduces us to his method and, on the other, the manner in which he in fact intervenes. Were we to pursue this sense of mystification a bit further we might soon begin to wonder whether, from that initial scene which only the rank of the protagonists saves from vaudeville, to the fall into ridicule which seems to await the Minister at the end, it is not this impression that everyone is being duped which makes for our pleasure. And we would be all the more inclined to think so in that we would recognize in that surmise, along with those of you who read us, the definition we once gave in passing of the modern hero, whom ludicrous exploits exalt in circumstances of utter confusion.2 But are we ourselves not taken in by the imposing presence of the amateur detective, prototype of a latter-day swashbuckler, as yet safe from the insipidity of our contemporary superman? A trick . . . sufficient for us to discern in this tale, on the contrary, so perfect a verisimilitude that it may be said that truth here reveals its fictive arrangement. For such indeed is the direction in which the principles of that verisimilitude lead us. Entering into its strategy, we indeed perceive a new drama we may call complementary to the first, insofar as the latter was what is termed a play without words whereas the interest of the second plays on the properties of speech. 3 If it is indeed clear that each of the two scenes of the real drama is narrated in the course of a different dialogue, it is only through access to those notions set forth in our teaching that one may recognize that it is not thus simply to augment the charm of the exposition, but that the dialogues themselves, in the opposite use they make of the powers of speech, take on a tension which makes of them a different drama, one which our vocabulary will distinguish from the first as persisting in the symbolic order. The first dialoguebetween the Prefect of Police and Dupinis played as between a deaf man and one who hears. That is, it presents the real complexity of what is ordinarily simplified, with the most confused results, in the notion of communication. This example demonstrates indeed how an act of communication may give the impression at which theorists too often stop: of allowing in its transmission but a single meaning, as though the highly significant commentary into which he who understands integrates it, could, because unperceived by him who does not understand, be considered null. It remains that if only the dialogue's meaning as a report is retained, its verisimilitude may appear to depend on a guarantee of exactitude. But here dialogue may be more fertile than it seems, if we demonstrate its tactics: as shall be seen by focusing on the recounting of our first scene. For the double and even triple subjective filter through which that scene comes to us: a narration by Dupin's friend and associate (henceforth to be called the general narrator of the story) of the account by which the Prefect reveals to Dupin the report the Queen gave him of it, is not merely the consequence of a fortuitous arrangement.
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If indeed the extremity to which the original narrator is reduced precludes her altering any of the events, it would be wrong to believe that the Prefect is empowered to lend her his voice in this case only by that lack of imagination on which he has, dare we say, the patent. The fact that the message is thus retransmitted assures us of what may by no means be taken for granted: that it belongs to the dimension of language. Those who are here know our remarks on the subject, specifically those illustrated by the countercase of the so-called language of bees: in which a linguist4 can see only a simple signaling of the location of objects, in other words: only an imaginary function more differentiated than others. We emphasize that such a form of communication is not absent in man, however evanescent a naturally given object may be for him, split as it is in its submission to symbols. Something equivalent may no doubt be grasped in the communion established between two persons in their hatred of a common object: except that the meeting is possible only over a single object, defined by those traits in the individual each of the two resists. But such communication is not transmissible in symbolic form. It may be maintained only in the relation with the object. In such a manner it may bring together an indefinite number of subjects in a common ideal: the communication of one subject with another within the crowd thus constituted will nonetheless remain irreducibly mediated by an ineffable relation. This digression is not only a recollection of principles distantly addressed to those who impute to us a neglect of nonverbal communication: in determining the scope of what speech repeats, it prepares the question of what symptoms repeat. Thus the indirect telling sifts out the linguistic dimension, and the general narrator, by duplicating it, hypothetically adds nothing to it. But its role in the second dialogue is entirely different. For the latter will be opposed to the first like those poles we have distinguished elsewhere in language and which are opposed like word to speech. Which is to say that a transition is made here from the domain of exactitude to the register of truth. Now that registerwe dare think we needn't come back to thisis situated entirely elsewhere, strictly speaking at the very foundation of intersubjectivity. It is located there where the subject can grasp nothing but the very subjectivity which constitutes an Other as absolute. We shall be satisfied here to indicate its place by evoking the dialogue which seems to us to merit its attribution as a Jewish joke by that state of privation through which the relation of signifier to speech appears in the entreaty which brings the dialogue to a close: Why are you Iying to me? one character shouts breathlessly. Yes, why do you lie to me saying you're going to Cracow so I should believe you're going to Lemberg, when in reality you are going to Cracow? We might be prompted to ask a similar question by the torrent of logical impasses, eristic enigmas, paradoxes, and even jests presented to us as an introduction to Dupin's method if the fact that they were confided to us by a would-be disciple did not endow them with a new dimension through that act of delegation. Such is the unmistakable magic of legacies: the witness's fidelity is the cowl which blinds and lays to rest all criticism of his testimony. What could be more convincing, moreover, than the gesture of laying one's cards face up
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on the table? So much so that we are momentarily persuaded that the magician has in fact demonstrated, as he promised, how his trick was performed, whereas he has only renewed it in still purer form: at which point we fathom the measure of the supremacy of the signifier in the subject. Such is Dupin's maneuver when he starts with the story of the child prodigy who takes in all his friends at the game of even and odd with his trick of identifying with the opponent, concerning which we have nevertheless shown that it cannot reach the first level of theoretical elaboration; namely, intersubjective alternation, without immediately stumbling on the buttress of its recurrence.5 We are all the same treatedso much smoke in our eyesto the names of La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyre, Machiavelli, and Campanella, whose renown, by this time, would seem but futile when confronted with the child's prowess. Followed by Chamfort, whose maxim that it is a safe wager that every public idea, every accepted convention is foolish, since it suits the greatest number will no doubt satisfy all who think they escape its law, thatis, precisely, the greatest number. That Dupin accuses the French of deception for applying the word analylis to algebra will hardly threaten our pride since, moreover, the freeing of that term for other uses ought by no means to provoke a psychoanalyst to intervene and claim his rights. And there he goes making philological remarks which should positively delight any lovers of Latin: when he recalls without deigning to say anymore that ambitus doesn't mean ambition, religio, religion, homines honesti, honest men, who among you would not take pleasure in remember ing . . . what those words mean to anyone familiar with Cicero and Lucretius. No doubt Poe is having a good time.... But a suspicion occurs to us: Might not this parade of erudition be destined to reveal to us the key words of our drama? Is not the magician repeating his trick before our eyes, without deceiving us this time about divulging his secret, but pressing his wager to the point of really explaining it to us without us seeing a thing? That would be the summit of the illusionist's art: through one of his fictive creations to truly delude us. And is it not such effects which justify our referring, without malice, to a number of imaginary heroes as real characters? As well, when we are open to hearing the way in which Martin Heidegger discloses to us in the word aletheia the play of truth, we rediscover a secret to which truth has always initiated her lovers, and through which they learn that it is in hiding that she offers herself to them most truly. Thus even if Dupin's comments did not defy us so blatantly to believe in them, we should still have to make that attempt against the opposite temptation. Let us track down [dpistons ] his footprints there where they elude [dpiste ] us.6 And first of all in the criticism by which he explains the Prefect's lack of success. We already saw it surface in those furtive gibes the Prefect, in the first conversation, failed to heed, seeing in them only a pretext for hilarity. That it is, as Dupin insinuates, because a problem is too simple, indeed too evident, that it may appear obscure, will never have any more bearing for him than a vigorous rub of the ribcage. Everything is arranged to induce in us a sense of the character's imbecility. Which is
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powerfully articulated by the fact that he and his confederates never conceive of anything beyond what an ordinary rogue might imagine for hiding an objectthat is, precisely the all too well known series of extraordinary hiding places: which are promptly cataloged for us, from hidden desk drawers to removable tabletops, from the detachable cushions of chairs to their hollowed-out legs, from the reverse side of mirrors to the thickness of book bindings. After which, a moment of derision at the Prefect's error in deducing that because the Minister is a poet, he is not far from being mad, an error, it is argued, which would consist, but this is hardly negligible, simply in a false distribution of the middle term, since it is far from following from the fact that all madmen are poets. Yes indeed. But we ourselves are left in the dark as to the poet's superiority in the art of concealmenteven if he be a mathematician to bootsince our pursuit is suddenly thwarted, dragged as we are into a thicket of bad arguments directed against the reasoning of mathematicians, who never, so far as I know, showed such devotion to their formulae as to identify them with reason itself. At least, let us testify that unlike what seems to be Poe's experience, it occasionally befalls uswith our friend Riguet, whose presence here is a guarantee that our incursions into combinatory analysis are not leading us astrayto hazard such serious deviations (virtual blasphemies, according to Poe) as to cast into doubt that x2 + px is perhaps not absolutely equal to q, without everhere we give the lie to Poehaving had to fend off any unexpected attack. Is not so much intelligence being exercised then simply to divert our own from what had been indicated earlier as given, namely, that the police have looked everywhere: which we were to understandvis--vis the area in which the police, not without reason, assumed the letter might be foundin terms of a (no doubt theoretical) exhaustion of space, but concerning which the tale's piquancy depends on our accepting it literally? The division of the entire volume into numbered compartments, which was the principle governing the operation, being presented to us as so precise that the fiftieth part of a line, it is said, could not escape the probing of the investigators. Have we not then the right to ask how it happened that the letter was not found anywhere, or rather to observe that all we have been told of a more far-ranging conception of concealment does not explain, in all rigor, that the letter escaped detection, since the area combed did in fact contain it, as Dupin's discovery eventually proves? Must a letter then, of all objects, be endowed with the property of nullibiety: to use a term which the thesaurus known as Roget picks up from the semiotic utopia of Bishop Wilkins?7 It is evident (a little too self-evident)8 that between letter and place exist relations for which no French word has quite the extension of the English adjective odd. Bizarre, by which Baudelaire regularly translates it, is only approximate. Let us say that these relations are . . . singuliers, for they are the very ones maintained with place by the signifer. You realize, of course, that our intention is not to turn them into subtle relations, nor is our aim to confuse letter with spirit, even if we receive the former by pneumatic dispatch, and that we readily admit that one kills whereas the other quickens, insofar as the signifieryou perhaps begin to understandmaterializes the agency of death. But if it is first of all on the materiality of the signifier that we have insisted, that materiality is odd [singulire] in many ways, the first of which is not to admit partition. Cut a letter in small pieces, and it remains the letter it isand this in a completely different sense than Gestalttheorie would account for with the dormant vitalism informing its notion of the whole.9 Language delivers its judgment to whoever knows how to hear it: through the usage of the
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article as parritive particle. It is there that spiritif spirit be living meaningappears, no less oddly, as more available for quantification than its letter. To begin with meaning itself, which bears our saying: a speech rich with meaning [plein de signification], just as we recognize a measure of intention [de l'intention] in an act, or deplore that there is no more love {plus d'amour]; or store up hatred {de la haine] and expend devotion [du devouement], and so much infatuation [tant d'infatuation] is easily reconciled to the fact that there will always be ass [de la cuisse] for sale and brawling [du rififi] among men. But as for the letterbe it taken as typographical character, epistle, or what makes a man of letterswe will say that what is said is to be understood to the letter [ la lettre], that a letter [une lettre] awaits you at the post office, or even that you are acquainted with letters [que vous avez des lettres]never that there is letter [de la lettre] anywhere, whatever the context, even to designate overdue mail. For the signifier is a unit in its very uniqueness, being by nature symbol only of an absence. Which is why we cannot say of the purloined letter that, like other objects, it must be or not be in a particular place but that unlike them it will be and not be where it is, wherever it goes. Let us, in fact, look more closely at what happens to the police. We are spared nothing concerning the procedures used in searching the area submitted to their investigation: from the division of that space into compartments from which the slightest bulk could not escape detection, to needles probing upholstery, and, in the impossibility of sounding wood with a tap, to a microscope exposing the waste of any drilling at the surface of its hollow, indeed the infinitesimal gaping of the slightest abyss. As the network tightens to the point that, not satisfied with shaking the pages of books, the police take to counting them, do we not see space itself shed its leaves like a letter? But the detectives have so immutable a notion of the real that they fail to notice that their search tends to transform it into its object. A trait by which they would be able to distinguish that object from all others. This would no doubt be too much to ask them, not because of their lack of insight but rather because of ours. For their imbecility is neither of the individual nor the corporative variety; its source is subjective. It is the realist's imbecility, which does not pause to observe that nothing, however deep in the bowels of the earth a hand may seek to ensconce it, will ever be hidden there, since another hand can always retrieve it, and that what is hidden is never but what is missing from its place, as the call slip puts it when speaking of a volume lose in a library. And even if the book be on an adjacent shelf or in the next slot, it would be hidden there, however visibly it may appear. For it can literally be said that something is missing from its place only of what can change it: the symbolic. For the real, whatever upheaval we subject it to, is always in its place; it carries it glued to its heel, ignorant of what might exile it from it. And to return to our cops, who took the letter from the place where it was hidden, how could they have seized the letter? In what they turned between their fingers what did they hold but what did not answer to their description. A letter, a litter: in Joyce's circle, they played on the homophony of the two words in English.10 Nor does the seeming bit of refuse the police are now handling reveal its other nature for being but half torn. A different seal on a scamp of another color, the mark of a different handwriting in the superscription are here the most inviolable modes of concealment. And if they stop at the reverse side of the letter, on which, as is known, the recipient's address was written in that period, it is because the letter has for them no other side but its reverse.
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What indeed might they find on its obverse? Its message, as is often said to our cybernetic joy? . . . But does it not occur to us that this message has already reached its recipient and has even been left with her, since the insignificant scrap of paper now represents it no less well than the original note. If we could admit that a letter has completed its destiny after fulfilling its function, the ceremony of returning letters would be a less common close to the extinction of the fires of love's feasts. The signifier is not functional. And the mobilization of the elegant society whose frolics we are following would as well have no meaning if the letter itself were content with having one. For it would hardly be an adequate means of keeping it secret to inform a squad of cops of its existence. We might even admit that the letter has an entirely different (if no more urgent) meaning for the Queen from the one understood by the Minister. The sequence of events would not be noticeably affected, not even if it were strictly incomprehensible to an uninformed reader. For it is certainly not so for everybody, since, as the Prefect pompously assures us, to everyone's derision, the disclosure of the document to a third person, who shall be nameless (that name which leaps to the eye like the pig's tail twixt the teeth of old Ubu) would bring in question the honor of a personage of most exalted station, indeed that the honor and peace of the illustrious personage are so jeopardized. In that case, it is not only the meaning but the text of the message which it would be dangerous to place in circulation, and all the more so to the extent that it might appear harmless, since the risks of an indiscretion unintentionally committed by one of the letter's holders would thus be increased. Nothing then can redeem the police's position, and nothing would be changed by improving their culture. Scripta manent: in vain would they learn from a deluxe-edition humanism the proverbial lesson which verba volant concludes. May it but please heaven that writings remain, as is rather the case with spoken words: for the indelible debt of the latter impregnates our acts with its transferences. Writings scatter to the winds blank checks in an insane charge. And were they not such flying leaves, there would be no purloined letters. But what of it? For a purloined letter to exist, we may ask, to whom does a letter belong? We stressed a moment ago the oddity implicit in returning a letter to him who had but recently given wing to its burning pledge. And we generally deem unbecoming such premature publications as the one by which the Chevalier d'Eon put several of his correspondents in a rather pitiful position. Might a letter on which the sender retains certain rights then not quite belong to the person to whom it is addressed? Or might it be that the latter was never the real receiver? Let's take a look: we shall find illumination in what at first seems to obscure matters: the fact that the tale leaves us in virtually total ignorance of the sender, no less than of the contents, of the letter. We are told only that the Minister immediately recognized the handwriting of the address and only incidentally, in a discussion of the Minister's camouflage, is it said that the original seal bore the ducal arms of the S family. As for the letter's bearing, we know only the dangers it entails should it come into the hands of a specific third party, and that its possession has allowed the Minister to wield, to a very
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dangerous extent, for political purposes, the power it assures him over the interested party. But all this tells us nothing of the message it conveys. Love letter or conspiratorial letter, letter of betrayal or letter of mission, letter of summons or letter of distress, we are assured of but one thing: the Queen muse not bring it to the knowledge of her lord and master. Now these terms, far from bearing the nuance of discredit they have in bourgeois comedy, take on a certain prominence through allusion to her sovereign, to whom she is bound by pledge of faith, and doubly so, since her role as spouse does not relieve her of her duties as subject, but rather elevates her to the guardianship of what royalty according to law incarnates of power: and which is called legitimacy. From then on, to whatever vicissitudes the Queen may choose to subject the letter, it remains that the letter is the symbol of a pact and that, even should the recipient not assume the pact, the existence of the letter situates her in a symbolic chain foreign to the one which constitutes her faith. This incompatibility is proven by the fact that the possession of the letter is impossible to bring forward publicly as legitimate, and that in order to have that possession respected, the Queen can invoke but her right to privacy, whose privilege is based on the honor that possession violates. For she who incarnates the figure of grace and sovereignty cannot welcome even a private communication without power being concerned, and she cannot avail herself of secrecy in relation to the sovereign without becoming clandestine. From then on, the responsibility of the author of the letter takes second place to that of its holder: for the offense to majesty is compounded by high treason. We say the holder and not the possessor. For it becomes clear that the addressee's proprietorship of the letter may be no less debatable than that of anyone else into whose hands it comes, for nothing concerning the existence of the letter can return to good order without the person whose prerogatives it infringes upon having to pronounce judgment on it. All of this, however, does not imply that because the letter's secrecy is indefensible, the betrayal of that secret would in any sense be honorable. The honesti homines, decent people, will not get off easily. There is more than one religio, and it is not slated for tomorrow that sacred ties shall cease to rend us in two. As for ambitus: a detour, we see, is not always inspired by ambition. For if we are taking one here, by no means is it stolen (the word is apt), since, to lay our cards on the table, we have borrowed Baudelaire's title in order to stress not, as is incorrectly claimed, the conventional nature of the signifier, but rather its priority in relation to the signified. It remains, nevertheless, that Baudelaire, de spite his devotion, betrayed Poe by translating as la lettre volee (the stolen letter) his title: the purloined letter, a title containing a word rare enough for us to find it easier to define its etymology than its usage. To purloin, says the Oxford dictionary, is an Anglo-French word, that is: composed of the prefix pur-, found in purpose, purchase, purport, and of the Old French word: loing, loigner, long. We recognize in the first element the Latin pro-, as opposed to ante, insofar as it presupposes a rear in front of which it is borne, possibly as its warrant, indeed even as its pledge (whereas ante goes forth to confront what it encounters). As for the second, an Old French word: loigner, a verb attributing place au loing (or, still in use, long), it does not mean au loin (far off), but au long de (alongside); it is a question then of putting aside, or, to invoke a familiar expression which plays on the two meanings: mettre gauche (to put to the
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left; to put amiss). Thus we are confirmed in our detour by the very object which draws us on into it: for we are quite simply dealing with a letter which has been diverted from its path; one whose course has been prolonged (etymologically, the word of the title), or, to revert to the language of the post office, a letter in sufferance. Here then, simple and odd, as we are told on the very first page, reduced to its simplest expression, is the singularity of the letter, which as the title indicates, is the true subject of the tale: since it can be diverted, it must have a course which is proper to it. the trait by which its incidence as signifier is affirmed. For we have learned to conceive of the signifier as sustaining itself only in a displacement comparable to that found in electric news strips or in the rotating memories of our machines-that-think-like-men, this because of the alternating operation which is its principle, requiring it to leave its place, even though it returns to it by a circular path.11 This is indeed what happens in the repetition automatism. What Freud teaches us in the text we are commenting on is that the subject must pass through the channels of the symbolic, but what is illustrated here is more gripping still: it is not only the subject, but the subjects, grasped in their intersubjectivity, who line up, in other words our ostriches, to whom we here return, and who, more docile than sheep, model their very being on the moment of the signifying chain which traverses them. If what Freud discovered and rediscovers with a perpetually increasing sense of shock has a meaning, it is that the displacement of the signifier determines the subjects in their acts, in their destiny, in their refusals, in their blindness, in their end and in their fate, their innate gifts and social acquisitions notwithstanding, without regard for character or sex, and that, willingly or not, everything that might be considered the stuff of psychology, kit and caboodle, will follow the path of the signifier. Here we are, in fact, yet again at the crossroads at which we had left our drama and its round with the question of the way in which the subjects replace each other in it. Our fable is so constructed as to show that it is the letter and its diversion which governs their entries and roles. If it be in sufferance, they shall endure the pain. Should they pass beneath its shadow, they become its reflection. Falling in possession of the letteradmirable ambiguity of languageits meaning possesses them. So we are shown by the hero of the drama in the repetition of the very situation which his daring brought to a head, a first time, to his triumph. If he now succumbs to it, it is because he has shifted to the second position in the triad in which he was initially third, as well as the thief and this by virtue of the object of his theft. For if it is, now as before, a question of protecting the letter from inquisitive eyes, he can do nothing but employ the same technique he himself has already foiled: Leave it in the open? And we may properly doubt that he knows what he is thus doing, when we see him immediately captivated by a dual relationship in which we find all the traits of a mimetic lure or of an animal feigning death, and, trapped in the typically imaginary situation of seeing that he is not seen, misconstrue the real situation in which he is seen not seeing. And what does he fail to see? Precisely the symbolic situation which he himself was so well able to see, and in which he is now seen seeing himself not being seen. The Minister acts as a man who realizes that the police's search is his own defense, since
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we are told he allows them total access by his absences: he nonetheless fails to recognize that outside of that search he is no longer defended. This is the very autruicherie whose artisan he was, if we may allow our monster to proliferate, but it cannot be by sheer stupidity that he now comes to be its dupe. For in playing the part of the one who hides, he is obliged to don the role of the Queen, and even the attributes of femininity and shadow, so propitious to the act of concealing. Not that we are reducing the hoary couple of Yin and Yang to the elementary opposition of dark and light. For its precise use involves what is blinding in a flash of light, no less than the shimmering shadows exploit in order not to lose their prey. Here sign and being, marvelously asunder, reveal which is victorious when they come into conflict. A man man enough to defy to the point of scorn a lady's fearsome ire undergoes to the point of metamorphosis the curse of the sign he has dispossessed her of. For this sign is indeed that of woman, insofar as she invests her very being therein, founding it outside the law, which subsumes her nevertheless, originarily, in a position of signifier, nay, of fetish. In order to be worthy of the power of that sign she has but to remain immobile in its shadow, thus finding, moreover, like the Queen, that simulation of mastery in inactivity that the Minister's Iynx eye alone was able to penetrate. This stolen signhere then is man in its possession: sinister in that such possession may be sustained only through the honor it defies, cursed in calling him who sustains it to punishment or crime, each of which shatters his vassalage to the Law. There must be in this sign a singular noli me tangere for its possession, like the Socratic sting ray, to benumb its man to the point of making him fall into what appears clearly in his case to be a state of idleness. For in noting, as the narrator does as early as the first dialogue, that with the letter's use its power disappears, we perceive that this remark, strictly speaking, concerns precisely its use for ends of powerand at the same time that such a use is obligatory for the Minister. To be unable to rid himself of it, the Minister indeed must not know what else to do with the letter. For that use places him in so total a dependence on the letter as such, that in the long run it no longer involves the letter at all. We mean that for that use truly to involve the letter, the Minister, who, after all, would be so authorized by his service to his master the King, might present to the Queen respectful admonitions, even were he to assure their sequel by appropriate precautionsor initiate an action against the author of the letter, concerning whom, the fact that he remains outside the story's focus reveals the extent to which it is not guilt and blame which are in question here, but rather that sign of contradiction and scandal constituted by the letter, in the sense in which the Gospel says that it must come regardless of the anguish of whoever serves as its bearer,or even submit the letter as document in a dossier to a 'third person' qualified to know whether it will issue in a Star Chamber for the Queen or the Minister's disgrace. We will not know why the Minister does not resort to any of these uses, and it is fitting that we don't, since the effect of this non-use alone concerns us; it suffices for us to know that the way in which the letter was acquired would pose no obstacle to any of them.
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For it is clear that if the use of the letter, independent of its meaning, is obligatory for the Minister, its use for ends of power can only be potential, since it cannot become actual without vanishing in the process but in that case the letter exists as a means of power only through the final assignations of the pure signifier, namely: by prolonging its diversion, making it reach whomever it may concern through a supplementary transfer, that is, by an additional act of treason whose effects the letter's gravity makes it difficult to predictor indeed by destroying the letter, the only sure means, as Dupin divulges at the start, of being rid of what is destined by nature to signify the annulment of what it signifies. The ascendancy which the Minister derives from the situation is thus not a function of the letter, but, whether he knows it or not, of the role it constitutes for him. And the Prefect's remarks indeed present him as someone who dares all things, which is commented upon significantly: those unbecoming as well as those becoming a man, words whose pungency escapes Baudelaire when he translates: ce qui est indigne d'un homme aussi bien que ce qui est digne de lui (those unbecoming a man as well as those becoming him). For in its original form, the appraisal is far more appropriate to what might concern a woman. This allows us to see the imaginary import of the character, that is, the narcissistic relation in which the Minister is engaged, this time, no doubt, without knowing it. It is indicated, as well, as early as the second page of the English text by one of the narrator's remarks, whose form is worth savoring: the Minister's ascendancy, we are told, would depend upon the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber. Words whose importance the author underscores by having Dupin repeat them literally after the narration of the scene of the theft of the letter. Here again we may say that Baudelaire is imprecise in his language in having one ask, the other confirm, in these words: Le voleur saitil? . . . (Does the robber know?), then: Le voleur salt . . . (the robber knows). What? que la personne vole connit son voleur (that the loser knows his robber). For what matters to the robber is not only that the said person knows who robbed her, but rather with what kind of a robber she is dealing; for she believes him capable of anything, which should be understood as her having conferred upon him the position that no one is in fact capable of assuming, since it is imaginary, that of absolute master. In truth, it is a position of absolute weakness, but not for the person of whom we are expected to believe so. The proof is not only that the Queen dares to call the police. For she is only conforming to her displacement to the next slot in the arrangement of the initial triad in trusting to the very blindness required to occupy that place: No more sagacious agent could, I suppose, Dupin notes ironically, be desired or even imagined. No, if she has taken that step, it is less out of being driven to despair, as we are told, than in assuming the charge of an impatience best imputed to a specular mirage. For the Minister is kept quite busy confining himself to the idleness which is presently his lot. The Minister, in point of fact, is not altogether mad. That's a remark made by the Prefect, whose every word is gold: it is true that the gold of his words flows only for Dupin and will continue to flow to the amount of the fifty thousand francs worth it will cost him by the metal standard of the day, though not without leaving him a margin of profit. The Minister then is not altogether mad in his insane stagnation, and that is why he will behave according to the mode of neurosis. Like the man who withdrew to an island to forget, what? he forgotso the Minister, through not making use of the letter, comes to forget it. As is expressed by the persistence of his conduct. But the letter, no more than the neurotic's unconscious, does not forget him. It forgets him so little that it transforms him more and more in the image of her who offered it to his capture, so that he now will surrender it, following her example, to a similar capture.
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The features of that transformation are noted, and in a form so characteristic in their apparent gratuitousness that they might validly be compared to the return of the repressed. Thus we first learn that the Minister in turn has turned the letter over, not, of course, as in the Queen's hasty gesture, but, more assiduously, as one turns a garment inside out. So he must proceed, according to the methods of the day for folding and sealing a letter, in order to free the virgin space on which to inscribe a new address.12 That address becomes his own. Whether it be in his hand or another, it will appear in an extremely delicate feminine script, and, the seal changing from the red of passion to the black of its mirrors, he will imprint his stamp upon it. This oddity of a letter marked with the recipient's stamp is all the more striking in its conception, since, though forcefully articulated in the text, it is not even mentioned by Dupin in the discussion he devotes to the identification of the letter. Whether that omission be intentional or involuntary, it will surprise in the economy of a work whose meticulous rigor is evident. But in either case it is significant that the letter which the Minister, in point of fact, addresses to himself is a letter from a woman: as though this were a phase he had to pass through out of a natural affinity of the signifier. Thus the aura of apathy, verging at times on an affectation of effeminacy; the display of an ennui bordering on disgust in his conversation; the mood the author of the philosophy of furniture13 can elicit from virtually impalpable details (like that of the musical instrument on the table), everything seems intended for a character, all of whose utterances have revealed the most virile traits, to exude the oddest odor di femina when he appears. Dupin does not fail to stress that this is an artifice, describing behind the bogus finery the vigilance of a beast of prey ready to spring. But that this is the very effect of the unconscious in the precise sense that we teach that the unconscious means that man is inhabited by the signifier: Could we find a more beautiful image of it than the one Poe himself forges to help us appreciate Dupin's exploit? For with this aim in mind, he refers to those toponymical inscriptions which a geographical map, lest it remain mute, superimposes on its design, and which may become the object of a guessing game: Who can find the name chosen by a partner?noting immediately that the name most likely to foil a beginner will be one which, in large letters spaced out widely across the map, discloses, often without an eye pausing to notice it, the name of an entire country.... Just so does the purloined letter, like an immense female body, screech out across the Minister's office when Dupin enters. But just so does he already expect to find it, and has only, with his eyes veiled by green lenses, to undress that huge body. And that is why without needing any more than being able to listen in at the door of Professor Freud, he will go straight to the spot in which lies and lives what that body is designed to hide, in a gorgeous center caught in a glimpse, nay, to the very place seducers name Sant' Angelo's Castle in their innocent illusion of controlling the City from within it. Look! between the cheeks of the fireplace, there's the object already in reach of a hand the ravisher has but to extend.... The question of deciding whether he seizes it above the mantelpiece as Baudelaire translates, or beneath it, as in the original text, may be abandoned without harm to the inferences of those whose profession is grilling.14 Were the effectiveness of symbols to cease there, would it mean that the symbolic debt
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would as well be extinguished? Even if we could believe so, we would be advised of the contrary by two episodes which we may all the less dismiss as secondary in that they seem, at first sight, to clash with the rest of the work. First of all, there's the business of Dupin's remuneration, which, far from being a closing pirouette, has been present from the beginning in the rather unselfconscious question he asks the Prefect about the amount of the reward promised him, and whose enormousness, the Prefect, however reticent he may be about the precise figure, does not dream of hiding from him, even returning later on to refer to its increase. The fact that Dupin had been previously presented to us as a virtual pauper in his ethereal shelter ought rather to lead us to reflect on the deal he makes out of delivering the letter, promptly assured as it is by the checkbook he produces. We do not regard it as negligible that the unequivocal hint through which he introduces the matter is a story attributed to the character, as famous as it was eccentric, Baudelaire tells us, of an English doctor named Abernethy, in which a rich miser, hoping to sponge upon him for a medical opinion, is sharply told not to take medicine, but to take advice. Do we not in fact feel concerned with good reason when for Dupin what is perhaps at stake is his withdrawal from the symbolic circuit of the letterwe who become the emissaries of all the purloined letters which at least for a time remain in sufferance with us in the transference. And is it not the responsibility their transference entails which we neutralize by equating it with the signifier most destructive of all signification; namely money. But that's not all. The profit Dupin so nimbly extracts from his exploit, if its purpose is to allow him to withdraw his stakes from the game, makes all the more paradoxical, even shocking, the partisan attack, the underhanded blow, he suddenly permits himself to launch against the Minister, whose insolent prestige, after all, would seem to have been auflficiently deflated by the trick Dupin has just played on him. We have already quoted the atrocious lines Dupin claims he could not help dedicating, in his counterfeit letter, to the moment in which the Minister, enraged by the inevitable defiance of the Queen, will think he is demolishing her and will plunge into the abyss: facilis descensus Averni,15 he waxes sententious, adding that the Minister cannot fail to recognize his handwriting, all of which, since depriving of any danger a merciless act of infamy, would seem, concerning a figure who is not without merit, a triumph without glory, and the rancor he invokes, seemming from an evil turn done him at Vienna (at the Congress?) only adds an additional bit of blackness to the whole. Lee us consider, however, more closely this explosion of feeling, and more specifically the moment it occurs in a sequence of acts whose success depends on so cool a head. It comes just after the moment in which the decisive ace of identifying the letter having been accomplished, it may be said that Dupin already has the letter as much as if he had seized it, without, however, as yet being in a position to rid himself of it. He is thus, in fact, fully participant in the intersubjective triad, and, as such, in the median position previously occupied by the Queen and the Minister. Will he, in showing himself to be above it, reveal to us at the same time the auchor's intentions? If he has succeeded in returning the letter to its proper course, it remains for him to make it arrive at its address. And that address is in the place previously occupied by the King, since it is there that it would reenter the order of the Law.
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As we have seen, neither the King nor the police who replaced him in that position were able to read the letter because that place entailed blindness. Rex et augur, the legendary, archaic quality of the words seems to resound only to impress us with the absurdity of applying them to a man. And the figures of history, for some time now, hardly encourage us to do so. It is not natural for man to bear alone the weight of the highest of signifiers. And the place he occupies as soon as he dons it may be equally apt to become the symbol of the mose outrageous imbecility.16 Let us say that the King here is invested with the equivocation natural to the sacred, with the imbecility which prizes none other than the Subject. That is what will give their meaning to the characters who will follow him in his place. Not that the police should be regarded as constitutionally illiterate, and we know the role of pikes planted on the campus in the birth of the State. Bue the police who exercise their functions here are plainly marked by the forms of liberalism, that is, by those imposed on them by masters on the whole indifferent to eliminating their indiscreet tendencits. Which is why on occasion words are not minced as to what is expected of them: Sutor ne uItra crepidam, just take care of your crooks. We'll even give you scientific means to do it with. That will help you not to think of truths you'd be better off leaving in the dark.17 We know that the relief which results from such prudent principles shall have lasted in history but a morning's time, that already the march of destiny is everywhere bringing backa sequel to a just aspiration to freedom's reignan interest in those who trouble it with their crimes, which occasionally goes so far as to forge its proofs. It may even be observed that this practice, which was always well received to the extent that it was exercised only in favor of the greatest number, comes to be authenticated in public confessions of forgery by the very ones who might very well object to it: the most recent manifestation of the preeminence of the signifier over the subject. It remains, nevertheless, that a police record has always been the object of a certain reserve, of which we have difficulty understanding that it amply transcends the guild of historians. It is by dint of this vanishing credit that Dupin's intended delivery of the letter to the Prefect of Police will diminish its import. What now remains of the signifier when, already relieved of its message for the Queen, it is now invalidated in its text as soon as it leaves the Minister's hands? It remains for it now only to answer that very question, of what remains of a signifier when it has no more signification. But this is the same question asked of it by the person Dupin now finds in the spot marked by blindness. For that is indeed the question which has led the Minister there, if he be the gambler we are told and which his act sufficiently indicates. For the gambler's passion is nothing but that question asked of the signifier, figured by the automaton of chance. What are you, figure of the die I turn over in your encounter (tyche) with my fortune?18 Nothing, if not that presence of death which makes of human life a reprieve obtained from morning to morning in the name of meanings whose sign is your crook. Thus did Schcherazade for a thousand and one nights, and thus have I done for eighteen months, suffering the ascendancy of this sign at the cost of a dizzying series of fraudulent turns at
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the game of even or odd. So it is that Dupin, from the place he now occupies, cannot help feeling a rage of manifestly feminine nature against him who poses such a question. The prestigious image in which the poet's inventiveness and the mathematician's rigor joined up with the serenity of the dandy and the elegance of the cheat suddenly becomes, for the very person who invited us to savor it, the true monstrum horrendum, for such are his words, an unprincipled man of genius. It is here that the origin of that horror betrays itself, and he who experiences it has no need to declare himself (in a most unexpected manner) a partisan of the lady in order to reveal it to us: it is known that ladies detest calling principles into question, for their charms owe much to the mystery of the signifier. Which is why Dupin will at last turn toward us the medusoid face of the signifier nothing but whose obverse anyone except the Queen has been able to read. The commonplace of the quotation is fitting for the oracle that face bears in its grimace, as is also its source in tragedy: . . . Un destin si funeste, / S'il n'est digne d'Atre, est digne de Thyeste. So runs the signifier's answer, above and beyond all significations: You think you act when I stir you at the mercy of the bonds through which I knot your desires. Thus do they grow in force and multiply in objects, bringing you back to the fragmentation of your shattered childhood. So be it: such will be your feast until the return of the stone guest I shall be for you since you call me forth. Or, to return to a more moderate tone, let us say, as in the quip with whichalong with some of you who had followed us to the Zurich Congress last yearwe rendered homage to the local password, the signifier's answer to whoever interrogates it is: Eat your Dasein. Is that then what awaits the Minister at a rendezvous with destiny? Dupin assures us of it, but we have already learned not to be too credulous of his diversions. No doubt the brazen creature is here reduced to the state of blindness which is man's in relation to the letters on the wall that dictate his destiny. But what effect, in calling him to confront them, may we expect from the sole provocations of the Queen, on a man like him? Love or hatred. The former is blind and will make him lay down his arms. The latter is lucid, but will awaken his suspicions. But if he is truly the gambler we are told he is, he will consult his cards a final time before laying them down and, upon reading his hand, will leave the cable in time to avoid disgrace. Is that all, and shall we believe we have deciphered Dupin's real strategy above and beyond the imaginary tricks with which he was obliged to deceive us? No doubt, yes, for if any poin requiring reflection, as Dupin states at the start, is examined to best purpose in the dark, we may now easily read its solution in broad daylight. It was already implicit and easy to derive from the title of our tale, according to the very formula we have long submitted to your discretion: in which the sender, we tell you, receives from the receiver his own message in reverse form. Thus it is that what the purloined letter nay, the letter in sufferance, means is that a letter always arrives at its destination.
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Retrato del artista como crtico cultural

Jos Luis Brea [05-07-07] Hay una funcin a la que el artista contemporneo es invocado con cada insistencia... vez mayor
... -y me atrevera a decir que ello constituye su demanda diferencial frente a la que nuestra sociedad dirige a otros productores expertos de imgenes-: la de proporcionar al ciudadano elementos de anlisis crtico que le permitan afrontar reflexivamente la circulacin de las imgenes en las sociedades actuales, el bombardeo de ellas a que se ve sometido. Dira que, cada vez ms, se pide del artista que acte como interruptor activo de esos flujos de transferencia de imaginario: que en lugar de constituirse como un mero productor ms, acomodado a su forma de circular acelerada y banalizante, provea los materiales analticos y conceptuales para que ese flujo pueda abordarse con conocimiento crtico de las dependencias e intereses que ellas (las imgenes) impulsan y guardan de hecho con unas u otras epistemes culturales, con unos u otros marcos genricos de articulacin de los conceptos y las representaciones, las narrativas y formaciones de imaginario a travs de las comprendemos y actuamos sobre el mundo que hay y sus transformaciones posibles. Es desde ese punto de vista que puede considerarse que una formacin -como la que tenemos en nuestro pas- prioritariamente orientada a hacer del artista un eficiente productor de imgenes -tcnicamente bien producidas, formalmente bien resueltas y materialmente bien acabadas, en los contados casos en que a ello se llega- resulta enormemente insuficiente: nuestros artistas van a seguir careciendo de la capacidad de actuar en su trabajo propio- como tales crticos culturales, toda vez su formacin no les proporciona ni los conocimientos ni las competencias ni el conocimiento de las disciplinasa travs de cuya adquisicin se fundara un potencial slido y una capacidad seria de abordar el anlisis de los procesos de transferencia de imaginario que se dan en nuestro mundo con solvencia y rigor sostenible. Para algunos (la mayora, parece, pues es el modelo dominante y aparentemente irrevocable), la adquisicin de esa competencia debera caer fuera de la formacin acadmica acaso poseerla ya o adquirirla el artista de modo autodidacta, o tal vez en contacto con otras agencias extra-universitarias (institucionales o inscritas en la industrias culturales). En el fondo, esta ideologa es heredera de la que siempre concibi que el artista es un ser de talento que nace con aquello que tiene que decir ya en su interior, de manera que la nica formacin acadmica que le conviene es la de procedimientos y tcnicas. Pero esto (y aparte de una ideologa romntica totalmente trasnochada) es un completo error: porque acabara dejando en manos de una formacin no regulada (y totalmente catica y desordenada, si es que se llega a ofertar) lo que hoy por hoy es lo ms importante. Carentes de ello, no es ya que nuestros artistas hagan sistemticamente el ridculo cuando intentan expresar de qu va su trabajo. Es que su mismo trabajo es incapaz de efectivamente vehicular esas cualidades analticas que haran de l una herramienta adecuada para comprender y actuar reflexiva y crticamente sobre nuestro mundo. Me parece que eso explica mejor que ninguna otra rebuscada y tendenciosa justificacinla escasa atencin que el panorama internacional les suele prestar, pues son obras que muy
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escasamente tienen algo que decirle a nuestro mundo. En efecto, no nos equivoquemos, el fallo no est en otro lugar que en un sistema formativo irreductiblemente obsoleto y antiguo, y adems totalmente protegido contra toda evolucin por sus propios integrantes. Creo que actuar de una vez sobre ello para cambiar radicalmente el perfil de nuestras academias- debera contemplarse con urgencia, como una autntica prioridad poltica. Sin abordar la cual tantas y tantas otras iniciativas y dedicacin ostentosa de recursos- en las polticas artsticas son un puro trabajo espurio.
Jos Luis Brea, autor del presente texto acaba de publicar un ensayo titulado: NOLI ME LEGERE. El enfoque retrico y el primado de la alegora en el arte contemporneo. Lo podis compar aqu [CENDEAC]
Publicado originalmente en CULTURAS de la Vanguardiavisita SALON KRITIK
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Jos Luis Brea * La crtica de arte despus de la fe en el arte

Jos Luis Brea [22-04-06] Cul podra ser la base, hoy, del trabajo de la crtica, en su acepcin ms comprometida y al mismo tiempo rigurosa? Dira que, bsicamente, un trabajo de enmarcado de los pronunciamientos, de los contenidos de produccin de significado comprometidos por las producciones culturales. No el ejercicio de adhesin a unos u otras, atencin, sino uno que por encima de todo se dara por misin el anlisis crtico de tales producciones culturales, ejerciendo respecto de ellas un distanciamiento epistemolgico cuyo objetivo fundamental sera siempre el conseguir situarlas, enmarcarlas, referirlas a la constelacin de intereses y dependencias conceptuales, histricas, culturales, institucionales- en base a los que cada produccin enunciativa alcanza a cumplirse como social e intersubjetivamente significativa. En primera instancia, y por lo tanto, el trabajo propio de la crtica debe desplegarse con una dimensin inequvoica de crtica de la institucin (de la institucin-Arte, vaya). Es en el seno de ella donde, en efecto, la produccin cultural se convierte en socialmente representativa, cargndose de significado y fuerza simblica. Por ello, la crtica necesita ejercer el distanciamiento que le permita postular su propio trabajo productivo simblico en un terreno de des-implicacin efectiva con la constelacin de presuposiciones fiduciarias que sostienen el funcionamiento prctico de la institucin-Arte, con la que se relaciona. Digamos que su trabajo principal consistira en intentar poner al desnudo el sistema de enunciados, prcticas y formaciones institucionalizadas implcito los dogmas de f- que sostienen como formacin estable la propia estructura funcional en cuyo espacio pblico efectivo se despliega la prctica artstica, como prctica de interaccin social. La primera problemtica que aqu se abre apunta al hecho de que la propia definicin estructural de la crtica encuentra su postulacin orgnica precisamente en el espacio de la institucin-Arte. Y ello tanto en su funcin publicitadora, a travs de los medios de comunicacin (en los que ejerce primordialmente como tal, e independientemente de que su pronunciamiento crtico sea favorable o contrario, periodstico o ms analitico-crtico), como en la funcin cada vez ms normalizada de gestora aplicada de las nuevas dinmicas de trabajo espectacular integrado, desarrolladas bajo la forma de la curadura independiente, cuando no bajo la ms descarada todava de la integracin efectiva en las plantillas laborales de los museos, centros de arte, y organizaciones diversas de bienales y otro tipo de exposiciones temporales. Reservar ms adelante un par de prrafos para tratar de esta cuestin de la, digamos, crtica institucional integrada, de la posibilidad de que la prctica que desde ella se realiza pueda considerarse efectiva y creblemente crtica. Pero me permitir ofrecer antes un par de palabras ms sobre la primera modalidad que he distinguido de la crtica, la relacionada con la escritura y la publicacin de anlisis o reseas crticas relacionadas con las prcticas de produccin cultural y artstica. La escritura es para m, esto lo he dicho en mltiples ocasiones, la herramienta por excelencia, el lugar en el que verdaderamente la crtica se hace posible. Esto es as porque ella convoca los potenciales mismos que deben en profundidad caracterizar el ejercicio
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crtico: la posterizacin interpretativa, la apertura de una distancia con respecto a su objeto, pero tambin y sobre todo la incorporacin de una cesura, de una hiancia, por la que tambin se despega de s misma y de la propia constelacin conceptual en la que tiene origen, para derivar iterativamente en la secuencia abierta de sus posibles lecturas y contralecturas. Es en la medida precisa en que la escritura se desplaza y viaja sobre economas y sistemas de significancias ajenos a aqul en el que se origina que ella se constituye en dispositivo capaz de generar modalidades de reflexividad crtica, capaz de entender, exponer y atraer por tanto crticamente- noticia autocuestionadora del lugar en el que acontece (ya que este lugar no es fijo, sino una errancia, una lnea en viaje) sobre todo a partir de su iteracin entre una multiplicidad de sujetos interpretativos en los que se produce y genera un efecto de inteleccin colectiva. Ahora, y como es obvio, esta potencia crtica inscrita en la escritura no puede predicarse por igual de todos los regmenes bajo los que ella puede funcionar, y es justamente el ensaystico entendido precisamente como juego de produccin y seguimiento de conceptos en el sentido propuesto por Deleuze y Guattari en Qu es la filosofa? y lcidamente recuperado por Mieke Bal en su Traveling concepts- el que hoy por hoy concierta esa potencia. En la escritura que, al contrario, es carente de una proyeccin posterizadora y abierta al trabajo de recodificacin prctica que aporta la interlectura, la investigacin efectiva que reflexiona sobre ella, el trabajo crtico queda en suspenso, cediendo toda su fuerza simblica a beneficio exclusivo de los potenciales de publicitacin, de promocin y en cierta forma proselitismo de la constelacin de presuposiciones y dogmas de fe que perfilan el mapa de creencias y rituales sobre los que se asienta el funcionamiento de la institucin-Arte como tal (por decirlo de manera simple: nadie que no crea en el arte puede escribir reseas periodsticas en los suplementos, ni por lo tanto ejercer la fuerza crtica que acierte a efectuar presisamente ese desvelamiento de sus supuestos de fe) Naturalmente, si esto puede decirse de la crtica escritural la periodstica y de suplemento cultural, pero tambin y en muy buena medida de la mayora de la que se hace en revista especializada, que en modo alguno llega a desarrollar el carcter reflexivo-investigador que le atribuira las cualidades que hemos sealado como fundadoras de criticidad- si esto puede decirse de la crtica escritural, digo, con cunta mayor razn no podr decirse de la actividad que se realiza en el mbito curatorial y musestico, institucional. Que pueda tomarse la actividad que realizan los comisarios, organizadores de exposiciones, e incluso los directores de museos o sus empleados, -por ms que stos sean turbios cantamaanas pagados de s mismos hasta la vomitera-, los montadores de bienales y de tantos otros de los saraos caractersticos de estas nuevas industrias del espectculo integrado, que puedan tomarse todas esas formas del trabajo como desarrollos eficientes de una estructura y nocin consistente de crtica da una idea fehaciente de hasta qu punto la concepcin que preside nuestra idea de la crtica es una pura retrica que fundamentalmente se alimenta de una preconcepcin bsica: la de que el principio constituyente del desarrollo del arte contemporneo es precisamente el de la autocrtica inmanente. La concepcin de la crtica se nutre hasta tal punto de esa figura que nos hemos vuelto por completo incapaces de entender que en esa forma del trabajo integrado son nulas las condiciones de distanciamiento epistemolgico-analtico que realmente permitiran poner al desnudo la red de intereses, dependencias conceptuales e institucionales que sostienen el sistema en que ellas de hecho se apoyan. Las condiciones que haran posible evidenciar lo en realidad ms obvio pero por completo invisible, desde dentro-: que en su espacio lgico la criticidad es un mero espejismo, una fantasa, que adems sirve precisamente al sostenimiento y perpetuacin del mismo sistema al que se supone pretende desmantelar.
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Hasta tal punto que, de hecho y realmente, la pretensin de darse bajo la forma de la autocrtica inmanente y pese a que esa tradicin se ha convertido a estas alturas en la ms descafeinada y risible de sus caricaturas- opera en la prctica ya nicamente como un salvoconducto y un blindaje frente a cualquier pretensin de crtica exgena, digamos no comprometida y no partcipe del constructo epistmico de la constelacin de supuestos fiduciarios- que constituyen al del arte como un sistema dogmtico, refractario a crtica y cuestin. Esa condicin refractaria, blindada a la crtica exgena y ste va a ser ya mi penltimo paso en esta reflexin- se sostiene ahora muy ladinamente en la invocacin estratgica se dice- del carcter autnomo del arte, acaso la fabulacin ms tramposa que se ha tomado la decisin de mantener contra toda evidencia como irrenunciable herencia y legado de la invencin moderna del arte contemporneo. Y digo fabulacin tramposa porque ciertamente ella se apoya en un argumento tan capcioso como falsario. Que si no fuera porque se afirma (esta autonoma estratgica del arte) faltara el lugar desde el que ejercer la crtica antagonista de los imaginarios hegemnicos. La trampa interesada que ah se tiende consiste en algo que debera resultar bien evidente: que desde el abanderamiento de ese carcter polticamente potenciado para el ejercicio del antagonismo contrahegemnico que en ello se afirma se blinda el escenario protegido de lo artstico contra toda crtica o analtica que provenga de su ms all (quiero decir, que no participe de sus sistema dogmtico constituyente, intraparadigmtico) con ese argumento extremadamente falsificador de que es el arte desde ese interior protegido (desde el interior de las presupociones en que se asienta) el que hara posible la crtica de su exterior, la transformacin poltica de lo real, digamos, con el que al contrario todas las otras prcticas de produccin de significado cultural o social a travs de la generacin o utilizacin de la visualidad operaran en complicidad. Pero esto es, por supuesto, una fantasa interesada: la prctica artstica no es sino un hacer generador de narrativas e imaginarios intensamente conjugados e inscritos en el sistema con el que hacen constelacin el de lo real. La suposicin de que esas narrativas e imaginarios abanderan valores supuestamente antagnicos ignora aparte de la misma lgica sistmica por la que todo lo que es en el mismo lugar necesariamente se compone- el principio mismo de toda la tradicin de la crtica de la ideologa: que la forma que sta adquiere nunca es veraz y directa. Que la ideologa nunca enuncia los valores de lo que encubre, sino antes bien las retricas que lo hacen (a eso encubierto) tolerable, convivible, aceptable como escenario de la vida comn. Hasta tal punto que lo realmente habitual es que justamente su expresin caracterstica de valores sea la contraria por definicin a la que motoriza el sistema. Toda ideologa es por ello y en cierta forma contradiscursiva, antagonista . Ella es la base mediante la que se construye la falsa conciencia, la representacin falsificada de la realidad. Y todo ello funcionando bajo una lgica que hace no slo posible, sino incluso necesario, que puedan efectivamente darse movimientos en el mbito de la conciencia en apariencia contrarios pero en la prctica solidarios- a los principios sistmicos de funcionamiento de la lgica de desarrollo mismo del propio capitalismo contemporneo. Para decirlo ahora con terminologa de Eve Chiapello y Luc Boltanski en su ensayo el espritu del capitalismo: que el desarrollo reciente de ste sera in-inteligible sin reconocer el fundamental papel jugado en l la integracin funcional de lo que ellos mismos describe como la crtica artista. Me permitir extraer de ello y aadir un corolario final, que en cierta forma devuelve a mi inicial aseveracin: es cada vez ms urgente definir un territorio en el que la crtica pueda ejercerse desde la exterioridad al propio sistema de creencias y estructuras institucionales
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el en que las prcticas culturales inscriben su produccin, pues solo desde ese distanciamiento epistemolgico y slo desde ese descreimiento programtico en sus dogmas tcitamente asumidos, puede realizarse la tarea que como tal podramos en rigor llamar crtica: la puesta en evidencia y desmantelamiento de la constelacin fiduciaria de supuestos conceptuales, prcticos e institucionales- mediante los que una u otra prctica de produccin asienta el escenario, la episteme, en el que sus producciones rinden eficiencia, alcanzan vida social, intersubjetiva. Aadir que el desafo que en relacin a las artsticas rechazando y denunciando sin complacencia la trampa inscrita en la exigencia de trabajar en su escenario inmanente, de claudicar ante su proclamacin de autonoma- podra entonces razonablemente dar propsito a los estudios visuales (entendidos justamente como escenarios de trabajo investigadorensaystico, potenciadores del anlisis y la crtica cultural) podra ser ese precisamente: situar la productividad de sentido y significancia de las prcticas en un escenario especfico de conceptos estabilizados e instituciones sociales fortificadas; y mostrar y poner al desnudo las dependencias e intereses de todo orden que desde cada uno de esos escenarios afectan a la produccin de sus narrativas e imaginarios y ya sea que stos y a s mismos se declaren hegemnicos o contrahegemnicos, institucionales o antagonistas-, que afectan a la produccin de sus narrativas e imaginarios, digo, tal y como stos se despliegan en el curso de lo que con Appadurai llamara su vida social.
Publicado originalmente en www.agenciacritica.net
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Jos Luis Brea * Art.matrix

Jos Luis Brea [10-08-07] El autor reflexiona sobre lo real, lo social y la produccin post-artstica. La evanescencia del fantasma No ha ocurrido. Y sin embargo, todos los sistemas operativos han quedado inutilizados. No ha habido sabotaje, ni aparentemente ninguno de los mecanismos parece daado. Pero la eficacia de cada dispositivo ha quedado en suspenso. Es como si las correas de transmisin no cumplieran su funcin. A este lado de cualquier operador, las prcticas se realizan, y aparentemente todas las etapas de proceso se cumplimentan. En el otro lado pero cul es el otro lado? sin embargo, nada ocurre, nada se proyecta. Quizs son los instrumentos de reconocimiento, de rastreo, los que han dejado de funcionar. Tal vez, todo funciona y nicamente fallan los procesos de ponderacin de las consecuencias. O, tal vez... No puedo creer que todo esto est pasando. Si me atengo al ruido que hacen los motores, debo pensar que todo funciona. Como un viejo capitn de barco, he aprendido a detectar el mnimo problema en la sala de mquinas por la ms pequea vibracin inusual. Pero no hace al caso, todas las vibraciones son correctas, armnicas. Tripulacin, avanzamos. Pero es cierto que no tenemos feedback. Slo un blanco inquietante, zero data como nica respuesta. Si esto fuera una novela de Conrad o acaso un cuento de Poe, estaramos angustiados por el silencio inabordable de la calma que sigue, o antecede, a la ms estruendosa tormenta. Si tuviera que describirlo en alguna forma dira que eso es exactamente lo que est ocurriendo. Feedback zero. Si habis visto la pelcula, es como la escena del gato. No ha pasado nada especial, pero esto ya ha ocurrido antes. Y debemos entonces sospechar que algo inesperado est ocurriendo. La ms escalofriante de las sospechas es que esa falla revele que, justamente, nada nunca haba ocurrido, nunca. Esta inquietud nos traspasa: ahora que la imaginamos pensable, lo que nos abruma es pensar que siempre haya sido as. Puede haber sido siempre as? Intentar identificarme y si queris, aclarar de qu hablo. Como cualquiera de vosotros, pertenezco al syndicato. Ya sabis, nuestra clebre unin de trabajadores en el sector especializado de la cultura, o ms precisamente el sindicato de todos aquellos que reclaman el derecho a una tarea por ahora impedida por las condiciones sociales, el experimento que insta nuestro especfico intento de organizacin de revolucionarios profesionales de la cultura. Puede que tengamos que volver sobre esta cuestin, la de identificarnos, ahora que en nuestra era postfordista parece que la redefinicin del sujeto ms all de su situacin en el mundo del trabajo parece definitivamente necesaria. Pero dejmoslo de momento as, creo que me entendis: pertenezco, como cualquiera de vosotros, al sector de la produccin simblica, a la liga impredecible de quienes nos dedicamos al trabajo inmaterial. Ahora ya podis sospechar dnde se sita el problema suponiendo que la boutade duchampiana segn la cual no existen problemas haya dejado ya de deciros algo. No en lo que se refiere a la crtica de las condiciones sociales del trabajo que realizamos, sino, digamos, en la obnubiladoramente perfecta evanescencia de sus resultados. Podramos decir en su falta de consecuencias, pero esto sera presuponer que en este punto las apariencias no engaan. Y, admitmoslo, ello resultara demasiado doloroso. No, perdonadme, no. Lo que estoy diciendo no tiene nada que ver con el simulacro no
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creo que esa categora pueda interesarnos ms. Sino, acaso, con los procesos de teatralizacin de la resistencia, con la absorcin al dominio del espectculo de la obscena fantasmagora de su propia crtica. Por supuesto que ste es un proceso que conocemos bien, nada nuevo. Si un espectro shakespereano se ha colado en nuestro sistema para atribularnos, no es se, no es se. Hace tiempo que convivimos y sabemos que lo hacemos, aunque algunos quieran fingir ignorarlo con l. Con todo, acaso, puede que la cadena perdida que origina nuestra peculiar situacin s tenga que ver con la singularidad de ese bucle. O, digamos, tal vez es su anticipacin esa brutal amenaza constituida por el hecho de que alguien, en algn lugar, pueda estar jugndose su gesto la que origina el extravo. Pero el extravo ... de qu. En tanto mantengamos activo este esquema tctico del autodesmantelamiento aplazado, se supone que la energa del (sub)sistema la potencia que asegura su capital simblico se debera mantener intacta. Se supone. O acaso es ella la que decae ... Pero esta reflexin no tiene objeto, nunca lo ha tenido, nunca ha podido tenerlo. Justamente es de la elusividad del objeto, de lo real, de lo que hemos debido ocuparnos siempre. De poner en evidencia el carcter ficcional, producido, de lo real mismo. Nuestro terreno de trabajo ha sido siempre el fantasma, los oscuros e impredecibles recovecos de lo inmaterial la capitalizacin del imaginario. Que lo real es enteramente producido, y que el poder de nuestro trabajo se asienta en ello es algo que no puede sonarnos a nuevo. Con todo, esta plena ausencia de objeto que nuestros tiempos hacen posible tal vez est descargando un orden de complejidad imprevisto... No slo esa nada del referente, definitivamente hecha pensable sobre qu articular su trampa de reabsorcin fetichizada el sistema, en adelante sino el hecho mismo de que la constitucin secuencial de nuestros lenguajes, como un darse del signo en el tiempo, como imagen-movimiento, rompe con toda posibilidad de espacializar la presentacin del propio significante, en su estricta y perentoria materialidad ... Un tiempo sin objetos es eso lo que nos espera? Como una lluvia leve y continua de signos-enigma, matrix cae. Su cadencia es constante, pero cada uno de las matrices que emergen parecen llegar por sorpresa, por azar. Los signos se encadenan y forman secuencias que se arrastran en su cada, como si su peso estuviera en su unin. Ningn signo flota aislado, aunque se forma un constante polvo de matrices rotas, de fragmentos de cadena perdidos, que es el que (junto a la disincrona de las velocidades de cada) le da profundidad a la pantalla. Las matrices tienen algo de escritura, entre cabalstica, cirlica y japonesa, y algunas lneas van cargadas de ceros y unos, de numeraciones invertidas. Parece una reduccin matricial de otra escritura ms compleja, y en cierto sentido uno no puede evitar la sensacin de asisistir a una transmisin de contenidos muy sofisticada, altamente elaborada, como si estuviera leyendo un gran libro, la gran biblia que contuviera incluso toda su hermenutica. Una escritura todava o acaso definitivamente profana, compleja pero indescifrable. El mensaje es inabordable, pero nada en l despierta el inters de leerlo: de alguna manera se sabe que matrix no se lee: se ejecuta. No slo no podra uno imaginar los objetos que se corresponden con este estatus cero de los signos, sino que tampoco podra uno imaginar una interpretacin cualquiera de su fabulacin. Como quiera que sea, su mensaje se agota en s mismo, no admite mediadores, no se da a la interpretacin. Es ms, todo parece indicar que nos encontramos frente a un nivel de escritura estrictamente primordial. Total y enteramente productiva, para la que ninguna lectura, mediacin o interpretacin es necesaria. Ella es, precisamente, produccin de produccin, y cada uno de nosotros es no su lector, sino tan slo una de las lecturas que ella desagrana, la produccin y el efecto cadencial de sus cadenas matriciales, cayendo... Cualesquiera preguntas acerca de la verdad del mundo verdadero, de su interpretacin correcta carecen de sentido. Matrix es esta experiencia de la falta de sentido de cualquier pretensin de establecer la prevalencia de una interpretacin sobre otra. No se trata de establecer la falsedad tampoco de todas ellas, sino de evidenciar el carcter ficcional, construido, de cualquier versin del real, de todo el real. Y lo nico que sera ms real que
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ese real, es esta lluvia de matrices que es, pura y simplemente, la escritura de su economa estructural... la fianza simblica de su ser imaginario, su arcano narrado. Es esto lo que nos atrapa en estas pantallas. Ni detrs ni delante de ellas hay nada, absolutamente nada sino acaso nuestro estar ah, observndolas ocurrir. En el tiempo. Lo que llamamos niveles de realidad no representa otra cosa que un mbito de circulacin. Lo propio de matrix es un entrecruzamiento vertiginoso en todas las direcciones de esos mbitos. Los flujos se aceleran, producidos en un vaco aneoico; la misma idea de partcula carece de sentido: todo circular se hace molar, produce lneas cuando menos como efecto. Y ese entrecruzarse contnuo de las lneas traza oscuramente un ruido de constelacin, de nebulosa. Algunas esquinas reverberan con otras, como relmpagos en un atardecer de verano. Los brillos rebotan de extremo a extremo, creando ecos de luz, negociaciones inesperadas de la energa. Algunos recorridos persisten en la retina, en las memorias organizadoras, el tiempo suficiente de un instante y prefiguran una economa relacional. Su ficcin realimenta un poder que nos cautiva el deseo, quizs, la pasin, la reciprocidad, tal vez. Presas de l, es como si nos relanzramos mutuamente: unos en otros, como en una sala de espejos vaca con un reflejo que rebotara infinitamente, de rincn en rincn, de lugar en lugar, de nombre en nombre. Nuestro nombre ya os he dicho que pertenecemos al Syndicato, nuestro nombre es niguno, o podramos decir legin. Pues sabemos que lo nico que verdaderamente est en juego en esta economa abierta de las estructuras desnudas es el flujo de la comunicacin o lo que es lo mismo, las formas que adopten en ellas las figuras de la comunidad. Si ellas son entendidas, como debe hacerse, en trminos de una orgnica de la experiencia, tenemos la clave de lo que representa matrix: a saber, un dominio de negociacin de las formas de reconstruccin practicable (en la era pstuma inaugurada a finales del siglo20) de las esferas de lo pblico. El nico, se dira, cargado de potenciales de intervencin. Understood in this sense, the public sphere (...) is something that concerns everyone and that realices itself only in people's mind, in a dimension of their conciousness. Diseminada en innumerables direcciones, esta fragmentacin de los flujos lineas de cdigo, lneas de deriva libera economas locales, hace impensable rdenes de comunidades genricas. Sea cual sea el dominio, todo trabajo de ensamblamiento circulatorio funciona siempre en n-1. Como quiera que sea, no es imaginable alguna completud. No tenemos ya ese imaginario de universalidad que presupondra cerrar la definicin de lo pblico en el entorno de alguna figura ecumnica. Al contrario, nos movemos en tierras provisionales, en espacios curvos. Nos agregamos en pequeas comunidades micro, provisorias: usar y tirar. La intensidad lo es todo: no es que compartamos a priori un lenguaje sino que se conversa con unos u otros lenguajes y este ponerlos en comn, consentirlos circular, nos une, nos enlaza. No hay otra poltica (Y2K) que esta de la no identidad, de la comunidad post-territorio. Todo esto no tiene nada que ver con el arte, ese viejo producto de una sociedad engaada, enfermiza, encandilada con su falsa imagen, con el doloso espectculo de su propio existir enajenado. Toda persona sensata en nuestra poca estar de acuerdo s en que el arte ya no puede seguir justificndose como una actividad superior, o incluso como una actividad compensatoria a la que uno pueda honorablemente entregarse. Nada que ver con todo ello, por tanto, sino stas prcticas de intercambio directo cuyo efecto es la mutua produccin. Producir, para ser producido. Ahora, no es slo el objeto esa inmundicia lo que se ha perdido. Sino mucho ms all el propio fantasma que lo habitaba, la convencin del sentido (cualquiera). Ya nada se intercambia por objeto interpuesto, ninguno de los flujos requiere algn soporte especfico. Es por tanto el propio fantasma, como emblema de lo compartido, el que se desvanece. Nada certifica ya que nuestras visiones puedan encontrarse todas espejismos cruzados. La conversacin es un sueo, acaso una poltica. Al otro lado de esa pantalla fra que es ahora nuestro nico contacto con el mundo, la soledad es el otro rostro del que es nadie, fantasma evanescido. Construir comunidad, se ha dicho, podra ser la tarea poltica de
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nuestra generacin. Y acaso la nica misin digna de las prcticas escenario desconfigurado.
post.artsticas en este
NOTA DEL AUTOR Agamben.
Intercaladas en el texto, citas de Debord, Negt & Kluge y
Va www.arteleku.net
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Jos Luis Brea * El tercer umbral

Seleccionado por: Ali Pebre [17-09-06] La colisin funcional de las esferas de la cultura y la economa: he aqu el signo ms importante que marca la historia de la humanidad en los albores del siglo 21. Estatuto de las prcticas artsticas en la era del capitalismo cultural Ed. CENDEAC, Murcia. 2004. ISBN 84-95815-37-0 Podramos en primer lugar ver el flanco positivo de esta convergencia -que ya no habr ms espacio de separacin funcional para los registros productores de simbolicidad, ni para sus realizadores liberados, se llamen estos brujo, chamn, sacerdote o artista. Pero conviene nunca olvidar todo lo preocupante que esta fusin de registros conlleva: en primer lugar, que esa colisin se produce principalmente en beneficio de una apropiacin flagrante de los poderes de las prcticas culturales -los de investir identidad, crear comunidad, producir imaginario e identificacin a su travspor parte de la economa (un proceso ya percibido por Debord e ilustrado en la crtica reciente del llamado poder de las marcas); y en segundo, y no menos preocupante, el tremendo y desolador empobrecimiento de la vida del espritu que esa absorcin conlleva. El papel de las prcticas significantes, expresivas y de produccin simblica en este contexto -en el umbral de este tercer estadio de su desarrollo histrico- se carga entonces de enorme relevancia: ellas adquieren una crucial responsabilidad, que es de un cariz irremisiblemente poltico: en efecto, est en juego en su espacio dirimir en qu manos quedan no slo los poderes de construccin de identidad y an el destino y la calidad de la vida psquica, la suerte epocal del espritu, sino igualmente las condiciones de posibilidad del establecimiento de los lazos de una nueva cohesin social, el rastro en ella de la irrenunciable experiencia de lo comn -y su construccin contempornea. <a style=font-weight: bold; href=http://www.eltercerumbral.net/pdf/3umbral.pdf>El tercer umbral Jos Luis Brea. versin PDF para Acrobat Reader. Descarga gratuita pulse aqu (gratuito licencia creative commons) |versin impresa (pedido ::online::)
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href=http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/feliz/arte/desmenuzarlo/todo/elpepusoc/200705 24elpepisoc_10/Tes>El feliz arte de desmenuzarlo todo

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Publicado originalmente en CULTURAS de la Vanguardiavisita SALON KRITIK

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NOTA DEL AUTOR Agamben.

Intercaladas en el texto, citas de Debord, Negt & Kluge y

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